Anders had been subdued for the entire trip from Amaranthine, which suited Fenris perfectly. Anders barely spoke to Fenris, but occasionally spoke to the cat, which traveled perched on his backpack most of the time. Perched on the backpack and staring at Fenris most of the time.
Fenris did not like that cat with its knowing gaze.
They left Albert's caravan to unload its deliveries outside the gates to Vigil's Keep, walking together into the outer courtyard.
The walls of Vigil's Keep bore scars in testament to its endurance, the sturdy granite marked by siege engines, the gates obviously newer construction after the breach Varric had once described in one of his third- or fourth-hand tales of the Hero of Ferelden's adventures. Anders had left when Varric told the story of the siege of Vigil's Keep, not giving the tale the stamp of legitimacy it might have had from someone who had actually lived the experience.
"Is that… Maker, by my soul it is! Anders!" A red-haired man in the keep's distinctive silverite armor strode across the cobbles, his face breaking into a broad smile. "And is that Ser Pounce-a-lot? They told me you were dead, but I guess you never can tell with a Gray Warden."
"Alec." Anders looked as though he was trying to fake happiness past rising nausea. "You've grown up."
"I've done my best to make the Warden Commander glad of his mercy," Alec said, his smile shutting down in the face of Anders' false cheer. Fenris saw when his gaze fell to the cloth-wrapped chain that hung between them, and he was certain that the man saw through the ruse.
"I should take you to see him," he said, still eying the chain.
"Wait," Anders said. "Widald is here?"
Alec nodded.
"Any of the old guard? Nathaniel, Velanna, Sigrun?" He made a face. "Oghren?"
"Velanna and Sigrun are away, but due to return any time. You can still follow the smell to find Oghren. Nathaniel recently returned and should be in residence."
Anders forced his flagging smile back up to full brightness. "Then lead on. I'm sure the Warden Commander will be very excited to see me."
Alec led them through the courtyard, past a well-equipped forge where a bald man was bickering quite loudly with a rather put-upon looking shopkeeper.
"They're still at it," Anders observed, jerking a thumb toward the two men.
Alec followed the gesture and nodded. "They never stop. One day the iron isn't good enough, the next he's whinging about how no one ever brings him anything interesting."
Anders shook his head. "It's almost like I never left."
"But you did, and now you're back with a… friend." Alec said while he led them past a statue of Andraste.
"Fenris," Anders said. "His name is Fenris."
"Fenris," Alec repeated, as though to commit the name to memory while he led them up a set of stairs under a raised portcullis. The keep might not be under threat at this time, but Fenris could see that its inhabitants would be ready for immediate response if that changed.
"Vigil's Keep throne room," Anders told Fenris as they emerged into a great hall with a huge fire pit in its center. Its walls were lined with trophies and inset bookshelves that reached well above Fenris' head, a mix of militaristic and scholarly.
"I can't tell you how much time I used to spend in here." He raised his head and sniffed the air before turning his head to the left. "And there he is, in his favorite spot in the keep, by the ale cask."
The "he" that Anders referenced was a red-haired dwarf in heavy plate armor who was staring, slack-jawed at Anders, a tankard raised halfway to his lips.
"You. Mage," the dwarf said, pushing the tankard out in front of him to point at Anders.
"Me mage, you foul," Anders confirmed wearily, turning his head to Fenris to say, "This is Oghren. He rarely bathes, is even less often sober, and isn't too bad to have at your back in a dustup with darkspawn."
"Thought you were dead. Who's the elf?" Oghren asked. "New boyfriend?"
"No," Fenris said in a tone that should have shut that line of questioning down immediately.
"Which one of you is the girl?" Oghren persisted. "I can't tell. He wears the skirt, so you'd think he'd be the one taking it, but elves are all so—"
"Oghren," Anders interrupted. "How's Felsi?"
"Felsi?" Suddenly Oghren looked mildly panicked and Fenris noted that one of his hands shifted to protect his groin. "Where?"
"That good," Anders observed.
It was like watching everyone around him speak in another language of shared history and old jokes or old rivalries, or perhaps both. If Fenris were not well-accustomed to feeling an outsider, it might have made him feel a pang at his exclusion from this sharing.
Oghren seemed to conclude that this Felsi person wasn't coming to unman him and began to dig under his armor, loosening a buckle and releasing a waft of odor that crossed the room to assault Fenris' sense of smell. It reminded him of the stink of the Hanged Man the morning after a particularly debauched night, mixed with dried blood, and just a soupçon of a reek he had always associated with the Deep Roads.
It made him not want to get any nearer to Oghren than he had to.
Anders must have noticed Fenris' expression because he smirked over at him. "I'd tell you that you get used to it, but you never really do, and just when you think you might, he'll fart, or belch, or both."
Oghren interrupted them with a triumphant, "Here it is!" producing a crumpled sheet of parchment from somewhere Fenris did not want to even begin to picture.
He smoothed it out on his chestplate and held it out for Anders to take from him. It was permeated with Oghren's particular reek, but Fenris could see that it was covered in a child's scrawl and a drawing of something that, if Fenris squinted just right, looked as though it was either Oghren having carnal relations with a griffin, or more likely, a child's take on what riding a griffin might look like.
"The nugget sent that last month," Oghren announced proudly. "Right after she got the axe I sent her."
"Isn't she about four years old?" Anders asked dubiously. "Doesn't that seem a bit young to be giving a child an axe?"
"Almost five," Oghren confirmed. "That's not too young. If I'd had my way she'd have had an axe to cut her teeth on. Just because her dad's been kicked out of the warrior caste doesn't mean she can't learn the old ways."
Anders raised his hands in surrender. "Felsi seems like a woman with her head screwed on right. Other than ever getting naked with you—"
"Hey!" Oghren protested. "We didn't always get naked. Sometimes there were costumes."
"I… did not need to know that," Anders said slowly.
"Mage," Fenris said in a low growl. "You may enjoy your Gray Warden reunion after we are separated. We have other business now."
Anders passed the page back to Oghren, who, for all his filth and crude behavior, smoothed it carefully one last time before tucking it away under his armor again.
"Here to see the Warden Commander, I reckon," he said while he fiddled with his straps, getting everything situated just right.
"That's right," Anders said. He pointed to Alec, who had watched the reunion without interrupting. "Alec is taking us to him now."
Oghren leered. "Just go on in. I bet he's just waiting for company."
He belched and leaned back against the cask behind him, apparently dismissing them as he dove back into his tankard.
"He should be in his office," Alec said, leading them to the back of the hall and upstairs to a corridor lined with closed doors.
"I know the way," Anders told Alec. "You don't have to wait around if you have other things to do."
"I should—" Alec began.
"We came all the way from Kirkwall," Anders said before Alec could finish his protest. "I think this reunion should be private. You know us Gray Wardens and our secrets."
Alec flicked his eyes down to the chain again before he shrugged. "I'll wait here."
Anders nodded. "Thanks, but if it lasts more than ten minutes, you can probably go back to whatever you were doing."
Alec settled against the wall and folded his arms, while Anders led Fenris to the last door at the end of the hall. Fenris could hear muffled voices through the closed door, but the wood was thick enough that he could not make sense of the conversation.
Anders stopped at the door and took a deep breath before rapping his knuckles on the wood.
The conversation ceased before he heard a raised voice call, "Come in."
Anders drew another deep breath, lowered his head as though saying a quick prayer – although Fenris doubted that – and pushed the door open.
Opening the door revealed a desk and a man seated behind it, but neither the office nor the man occupying it met Fenris' expectations at all.
The office was small, cramped, and messy. The desk was stacked with stray bits of armor, leather packets, bits of bone, small boxes – and even… was that a pair of torn trousers? – as though they were looking into a storage closet instead of the Warden Commander and Hero of Ferelden's office. Even the walls, lined with shelves as they were, were untidily packed with bits and bobs, doodads and things Fenris could never imagine would be useful to the leader of the Gray Wardens for an entire arling, let alone a man who had stopped a blight and had most of Thedas looking up to him.
Which led to the man behind the desk, mostly hidden by the piles of stuff.
Fenris had somehow expected a man who had at least a passing resemblance to Garrett Hawke or at least to Leandra Amell. Widald Amell did not meet his expectations in any respect.
Fenris could not determine if he was tall or short at first glance, given that he was seated behind the desk, but he was dark-skinned. Not dark-skinned as perhaps Hawke might be if he spent more time in the sun than traipsing through Darktown, Sundermount tunnels, and Wounded Coast caves, but dark-skinned as a man who had been born with coloring the rich brown of a chestnut freshly emerged from its burr. His eyes were an even darker brown than his skin, and his black hair, neatly braided against his scalp, had the rows of braids collected into a tidy ponytail at the back of his head. His features were broader by far than Hawke's and perfectly suited his wider face.
In short, he looked nothing like Garrett Hawke, unless somehow being devastatingly handsome was the only family trait that carried across the Amell lines.
"Warden Commander," Anders said tentatively.
Widald Amell's expression underwent a startling series of changes, flickering through disconcertion, delight, anger, and sorrow before settling into neutral calculation as he rose from his seat behind the desk.
"Anders."