"Like Carrion Men"


2.

The bickering - good-humoured this time, not something always to be counted on when Alistair and Morrigan were left together - continued while they rigged a campsite. Aud sought firewood in the thin roadside brush while Alistair and Lelianna pitched the tent in the shadow of a boulder. It being Morrigan's turn to cook, dinner was recognisable as food and came along swiftly over a flame as much fueled by magic as by the brown stalky ferns Aud managed to collect. (After the first couple of times, their little band had united in banning Alistair from the cookpot. As a consequence, he dug more than his share of latrine pits, but fewer people had to dash to them in the middle of the night.)

Aud dropped a last armload armload of dead ferns beside the tent and folded herself down across the fire from Morrigan. Alistair, sprawled lengthwise with his head pillowed on his back, glanced up with a grin. "It'sh ood!" he said with indistinct enthusiasm around a mouthful of barleycake.

Morrigan, turning a sizzling rabbit on the spit, met Aud's raised eyebrows blandly. "If he burns his tongue, t'will at least stop his chattering. Here." A flip of her wrist sent two flat brown barleycakes sailing across the fire. Aud caught them, wincing at the heat on her palms, and yelped a protest when Lelianna, quick as any lightfingered pickpocket, snatched them from her fingers and flopped with boneless grace onto the grass beside her.

"Alistair is right," the bard said, nibbling at one corner and grinning playfully at Aud's affronted stare. "Morrigan cooks well. But you were hungry, yes? I would not take food from your growling belly, and oh, how it growls!"

Aud reclaimed one of the barleycakes and leaned companionably into the other woman's shoulder. Lelianna smelled of pine and sweat and the fleabane she'd crushed into the seams of her clothes. Aud was reminded that she had always preferred women. And the Orlesian was beautiful.

Keep your hands to yourself, you stone-blind fool. This war will kill you yet, and she deserves better.

"I told you I was unsure of our welcome at Orzammar," Aud said, when she had swallowed the barleycake. She wiped crumbs from her mouth with the back of her wrist, looked at the fire, not her companions. It was... hard, to make the words come. "You know Duncan recruited me into the Grey Wardens, Alistair. I don't know if he told you how."

"He didn't. He only said you were willing, and we needed you."

"Willing. Aye, I was that." Bitterly. "I'm dwarven, Alistair. It would've been an honour to join the Grey Wardens, had I come to them any other way."

"What do you mean?"

"The Assembly condemned me to the Deep Roads for kin-murder," she said, baldly, and did not look at their faces though she felt Lelianna stiffen beside her. "If I hadn't found Duncan there, my bones would've long since gone to feed the darkspawn. It was Trian Aeducan's death that doomed me, you see."

"If you killed him, one assumes he deserved it."

Morrigan's words. Despite herself, Aud snorted, met her dark eyes over the fire. "Trian? I daresay he did. We none of us were sinless, Morrigan. But it was Bhelen's will that killed him, and none of mine. I was a blind fool not to see it coming."

"You're Edrin's daughter?" Alistair, food forgotten, gaped at her. "Aud Aeducan?"

"No longer," Aud said sharply. "I was cast out. My name stripped from the Memories and the rolls of my house. I am Aud only, now. And I cannot think the Assembly will take kindly to me turning up on Orzammar's doorstep as a Grey Warden demanding their aid. So you should be warned, before we reach it. If there is... unpleasantness, make sure you remember that our cause must come first. Regardless of what happens to me." Her appetite was gone. She stood, an edgy tension singing in her muscles, and settled the twin swords in their sheaths at her hips. "I'm going for a walk. Save me some of the damn rabbit."