Fog Warriors
They found me broken and bleeding after fending off the Qunari from my master's departing ship.
They nurse me back to health, the wives, daughters and medicine women of the tribe. They speak to me as they minister to my wounds and change my bandages, narrating their actions. Soon I have a rudimentary knowledge of their language.
A month after I have been with them, a pair of their warriors; huge, towering males, come into what has become my hut. They speak to me slowly, clearly aware of my limited progress with their language. They want to know about me. All I can tell them is that I'm a slave and I belong to Magister Danarius.
They shake their heads, their horns brushing the roof of my hut. They say to me that I am free, that I am not a slave.
I shake my head. "They don't understand. You just don't stop being a slave because the master is somewhere else" I think to myself. I try to tell them, but my mastery of their language must be worse than I thought, they don't seem to understand my words.
The warriors look at me with what seems to be distress, but their naturally stoic faces are not very revealing. They walk out of my hut and one of the women comes in to bring me food and give me my language lesson.
Once I'm well enough to leave the hut, they introduce me to the rest of the tribe. Some of the Fog Warriors are elves. One of them speaks passable Arcanum and he becomes my new language tutor. He fills some of the language gaps I have. I discover that my understanding of their language is better than I had thought.
After a week of wandering around the camp and exploring the surrounding area, I start to feel like this dream-like experience might be real. I begin training with the warriors during the daily drills. They allowed me in, no questions asked.
These strange people, who asked nothing of me and shared everything with me, seemed like beings from some other world that had no connection to the Imperium or any other world I knew.
That's how I will remember them, years from now; mysterious, kind beings without enough malice to see that bringing an unknown into their lives could put them in danger.
That is the eternal shame I will live with; my betrayal of these wonderful people whose only crime was to not let me die on that beach.