They made good time the next morning, the sun being out and the ground having now mostly dried from the rain. Loghain was busy riding alongside and talking with Captain Dorn, so Alistair spent his time just staying within earshot in case Loghain called for him, and looking around, while talking occasionally to Crunch, the mabari having decided to stay close to him this morning. The fact that he was slipping bits of dried meat to the hound at intervals had absolutely nothing to do with it, of course.
The forest here was much more open than what they'd passed through further north, being mostly evergreen trees, the ground underneath them carpeted with fallen needles, with only occasional clusters of undergrowth. Some of it was fairly solid clumps of balsam firs or cedar saplings that would have been difficult to push through, if they hadn't had the road to follow, but mostly it was low-growing things like bracken ferns, and blueberry bushes or raspberry canes where there was enough sun.
They stopped at the top of a rise for their midday meal, one with a moderately spectacular view out over the surrounding forest. Their meal was sandwiches made of rounds of panbread, baked over the breakfast fires earlier in the day, split and filled with mild cheese and thin slices of very peppery dried sausage, and a dab of sour cherry preserve. And tea, Captain Dorn having decided to stop for long enough that fires could be lit to warm water for it.
Captain Dorn had mentioned a skirmish he and Loghain had once both been involved in against a scouting party of Orlesians, and both men were retelling the story now, a lengthy one, as it had involved tracking the Orlesians for some distance before finally encountering them, and then a nasty running fight when there turned out to be a second, larger group of Orlesians in the area. Loghain suddenly broke off, lifting his head and gazing off to the southwest. Then Alistair felt it too. "Darkspawn," he said.
"Yes," Loghain agreed. "Not many, but best to be prepared," he said, and quickly wolfed down the last few bites of his own food, even as Captain Dorn began shouting orders and all the soldiers hurried into motion.
Alistair was impressed by how quickly everyone moved; within minutes the fires had been doused, the few things that had still been in use loaded back on the pack mules, and everyone was mounting up again.
"How far?" Dorn asked Loghain as they moved out.
"Not very; no more than a mile, or I wouldn't have felt them at all, and likely less. Along the road, too, or not very far off it," Loghain judged.
They heard the sounds of battle before they came in sight of the darkspawn; shouts, roars, the clash of metal against metal. "There's wardens there!" Loghain called out to Captain Dorn, who nodded acknowledgement. They picked up their pace, and soon Alistair could feel them too. Moments later they emerged into a small clearing among the trees, where the road curved around the base of a small rock outcrop. There were figures on top of the outcrop; the wardens, fighting off the darkspawn that swarmed around its base.
Someone blew a horn; the soldiers roared a challenge as its notes faded away, the two together distracting at least some of the darkspawn away from their harassment of the beleaguered men. Most of the soldiers dismounted, horses generally being unwilling to close with darkspawn, formed up quickly into groups, and then moved forward with weapons at the ready. A few remained mounted, unlimbering bows and shooting over the heads of the men on foot toward the charging darkspawn, picking off several of them before it became unsafe to continue shooting.
Loghain and Alistair were in the van of the charge toward the darkspawn, each armed with sword and shield, bellowing loud battle cries to attract the attention of their enemy. Their taint drew the creatures almost more than their shouts did, and the nearest darkspawn quickly focused on the two of them, largely ignoring the soldiers in their hatred of the wardens.
It did made things slightly easier for the soldiers following them, at least, who were able to concentrate more on slaughtering the darkspawn than on defending themselves. There had not been all that many darkspawn to start with – a little less than two dozen – and in very short order all the darkspawn were dead, the group of wardens climbing down off their rock. Dorn's soldiers, many of them experienced with darkspawn from the Blight year, immediately started gathering wood to burn the corpses, and carefully checking each other for any cuts, or splashes of darkspawn blood.
"Commander! By the Stone but was I happy to see you arrive," one of the wardens called out as the group approached. Alistair belatedly recognized him; Podge, the dwarven warrior who had originally been in Nathaniel's group, and was now in charge of a group of his own. Brann he'd also seen before – a skinny elf, most of his hair cut very short except for an odd ponytail of longer hair that ran from brow to nape, his face covered with a tattoo like a smeared green hand-print. The other two were clearly the new wardens.
Loghain greeted Podge and Brann, then turned to the other two, smiling broadly first of all at a man who had to be one of the tallest humans Alistair had ever seen, only a few inches shorter in height than Sten had been, and equally heavily muscled. He had shaggy brown hair and pale grey eyes, and a faintly worried look. He had a long-handled mallet resting on one shoulder, the end gory from fighting darkspawn. "Wilf," Loghain said, nodding at him, before turning to look at the other man, as short and skinny as Wilf was tall and wide, with a bow in hand and a long knife hanging from his belt. "And this must be Lem?"
"Yesser," Lem said, ducking his head and looking very nervous. "Used to be a hunter, ser."
"So I heard. I'm sorry about what happened to the pair of you, and your friends, though I can't say that I'm sorry to have more Grey Wardens; as you've just seen, we need them. Wilf, how's your father these days?"
Wilf's lips worked in and out for a moment, brow furrowing deeply, before he answered. "He's good. His leg is still bothering him, but Reet and Timothy help him with the mill now."
"Timothy... I don't think I know him. Your sister's husband? Or just a friend?"
"Yeah, Reet married him..." A pause, lips working again. "...two springs ago. He was a refugee."
"Oh? Where from?"
"Lothering," Wilf said, and smiled happily. "He worked in a mill there too, so it was really lucky that Reet wanted to marry him."
Loghain smiled slightly. "I suppose it was," he agreed, then turned back to the two more senior wardens. "Podge, I'll need you to bring Captain Dorn and myself up to date on how things have been going here. The rest of you can help with cleaning up the darkspawn bodies. Are there any more around, or just the ones here?"
"They gave us a bit of a chase, commander," Podge said. "Brann and Lem should be able to find the outlying bodies; there wasn't many."
"All right. Wilf, Alistair, you two stay here and help the soldiers, all right? Podge, with me."
"Yes ser," everyone said, and scattered to their tasks, Brann and Lem heading off in what was presumably the direction they'd come here from, Podge following Loghain as he headed over to where Captain Dorn was, while Wilf and Alistair remained where they were, the pair of them looking around uncertainly.
"What should I do with my mallet?" Wilf asked worriedly.
"Oh, um... just put it down here by the rock, I guess. It should be safe here," Alistair told him.
Wilf nodded, and set the weapon down, its handle leaning against the rock, then walked over to the nearest darkspawn corpse, grabbing it by the ankles and dragging it off toward where the soldiers were piling wood and bodies together. Alistair did the same with a second one, grimacing at the feeling of the rough, still-warm flesh. Nasty work, but it needed to be done, and unlike the soldiers, at least he and Wilf didn't need to worry about any chance of contracting blight sickness from handling the tainted corpses. Which meant, he was pretty certain, that they were going to get to clean up all the messiest bits and pieces.
It was over an hour later before the last darkspawn corpse had been retrieved from the surrounding woods, the last stick of wood added to the pyre. A small keg of oil was broken open and poured over the pile, and then it was lit, everyone staying well-back from it as it roared into flame. A few soldiers were told off to maintain a watch on the fire, and see it didn't get out of hand, while everyone else headed to a second clearing a short distance further down the road, one bordering on a small lake, the water spring-fed and bitterly cold once you got beyond the shallows. Everyone bathed, and cleaned their armour and any items of clothing they'd been wearing, the general feeling being that it was better to be overly cautious with potential blight sickness than not cautious enough; all of the veteran soldiers had seen the effects of it at one time or another, and considered it horrifying. It was an enemy that no sword could fight.
Though it was only mid-afternoon, and they'd eaten just before the battle, the cooks broke out their supplies and began preparing a meal; they couldn't move on until the fire was out, so Dorn intended that they'd eat early, and then march into the evening before stopping again, hopefully at or near the sinkhole, which was only a few hours travel away. The soldiers certainly didn't object to having a lengthy break, and were soon scattered around the clearing, talking or napping or caring for their gear and horses, as the mood took them.
Alistair settled down with Crunch at one side of the clearing, preparing to clean his sword, only to be joined by the other three wardens, Brann flinging himself down on the ground to one side of Alistair while Lem and Wilf sat down on the other. Wilf had retrieved his mallet, Alistair saw, and had apparently cleaned it by the simple expedient of dunking it in the lake and scrubbing it with sand; it was still dripping with water. Lem had already unstrung and put away his bow, and pulled out his long knife to check the edge and see if it needed to be sharpened.
"Maker but I hate forests," Brann said, and stretched before wiggling into a marginally more comfortable position on the needle-strewn ground.
Alistair gave him a surprised look. "I thought elves liked forests?"
Brann snorted. "I'm a city elf, not some wilderness-loving Dalish," he said. "I prefer a place with streets and taverns, not trees and things that want to bite chunks out of me. Though at least this part of it is fairly dry. Have you seen the swarms of insects in the swampy bits? Give me a gang of street kids to escape from any day, at least they don't wiggle their way into your armour where they can bite you without you being able to squish 'em."
Alistair made a face. "We passed through a swamp a couple days ago, in the rain, so... yeah. Good thing Loghain had some fly-bane on hand, I didn't think to pack any."
"Yeah, he's always prepared for everything and anything," Brann said. "Which I suppose is why he's the commander."
"So how'd you end up a Grey Warden?" Alistair asked him. "Blighted?"
"Maker, no. I'm a conscripted criminal," Brann said, and grinned, as if it was something to be proud of.
"Oh yeah?" Lem asked, looking up from running his dagger across a whetstone. "What'd you do? Kill someone?"
"Nah. I was a smuggler for years, back in Highever. Had a nice quiet little racket, the right guards paid off, regular night runs set up. Could have kept it going for years yet, as long as no one decided to get greedy, and I'd been careful to recruit people who just wanted a little extra spending cash regularly, not some big haul. And then Howe came in, and slaughtered pretty near every living person in the castle," he said, eyes hardening, and spat off to the side. "Demons torment his blighted soul. My sister was a maid there. I heard from someone who saw the bodies when they were being hauled out and dumped on the midden – not even burned, just thrown out like trash – and she didn't die easy. None of them did. Not that there's many deaths that are easy. Anyway, Howe's men locked the city down tight; couldn't no-one come or go without papers, and only Howe's men had 'em. They let a few merchants leave who'd been there when it happened, but no one else. And they had the alienage locked down tight, wasn't anyone allowed in or out. I'm sure you can guess why," he added bitterly.
"He planned to sell you all," Alistair said.
"Yeah. Bunch of ships showed up in the harbour one morning. Big ones, from Tevinter. I was smuggling already by then; food mostly, they weren't letting anyone into the alienage to sell or out of it to buy, so those of us who could were sneaking out to buy fish and stuff from the fishermen who'd worked runs for us before, and sneak it back in. One of mine told me he didn't like the look of things; said he'd had to pass downwind of the ships and they smelled like slavers to him. And he'd know, having worked a slaver for a while in his youth up north, before he decided he'd rather deal in fish than flesh. He was getting out that very night, he told me, he'd only stayed long enough to get his coin from me, since the money would come in handy, running and resettling."
Bran sighed. "Well, I wasn't sure I believed him about the ships, but that very day a troop of Howe's men came in and surrounded a block of tenement buildings. Looking for someone, they said, and ordered everyone out, and then took them away. And that very night two of the ships sailed off again. So at that point I grabbed what money I had left, spread the word quietly to a few others, and I got out of there, fast. Don't know if anyone I told believed me, or got away – I've yet to meet or hear of any other elf who got out of there after the lock-down. Anyway, I decided to head for Denerim; I figured if Howe really was selling off the Highever elves, that the Amaranthine alienage was going to go the same way if it hadn't already, but Denerim... Denerim would be safe."
"Did you ever get there?" Lem asked.
"No, luckily for me. I got lost, wandered around over what must have been half the bannorn. I know cities and harbours and boats, not farmland and grain and sheep. Got close enough to see the glow of the burning when the darkspawn invaded though, and ended up in the tail of the army, earning a few coppers and my meals by acting as a scullion to the army cooks. And then spent the next few weeks fighting fires, and hauling bodies out of collapsed buildings, and salvaging usable bricks and beams, and thinking how much I wished I'd been the one to cut Rendon Howe's throat open for him."
Alistair nodded. A cut throat hadn't, in fact, been how Howe had died, but he didn't think that was exactly relevant. "So how'd the conscripted criminal part come about?"
"Oh, that was easy. I had to make a living, didn't I? Got back into smuggling, once all the other work started drying up. Went along on a long run from Denerim to Amaranthine a few months later, to check the place out. I'd heard with so few elves left there, there was a lot of good jobs actually offering decent wages, and I wanted to see if it was true. Only Loghain had shut down the Amaranthine end of the smuggling by then, and our ship sailed right into a trap; the hidden dock was manned by city guards instead of smugglers. I ended up in prison, which I suppose saved my life since it meant I was safely locked up in a good solid stone building when the darkspawn came through the city. Got pretty hungry for a while though, the guards having been killed in the fighting and everyone being too busy afterwards to give much thought to any prisoners still locked up in the jail. Then one day in walks Loghain with the new guard captain, food, and word that those of us still alive had two choices; the noose or the wardens. So I'm a Grey Warden."
"Not that you were overly grateful at the time," Loghain said, having approached the group without them noticing, all of them too busy listening to Brann's tale. All of them jumped, except Wilf, who just grinned.
Brann grinned as well, though it seemed more a baring of teeth than anything pleasant, not bothering to rise or salute or anything either. "Hardly. Especially when I found out you had a Howe as a warden."
Alistair's eyebrows rose. "But you're part of his patrol."
"Yeah, well, Nate's nothing like Rendon. After I tried to kill him we ended up talking a lot. He's all right."
"After you..." Lem said in tones of disbelief, his hands going still for a moment, the same words Alistair was thinking.
Loghain snorted, and lowered himself to sit on the ground as well. "It seems to be a bit of a tradition in the Grey Wardens of Ferelden. Nathaniel was looking to kill me when he first came to the keep, after all. But I recruited him instead. He's hardly the only warden to have ever entertained such designs about their commander or a fellow warden, either," he added, his eyes briefly meeting Alistair's. "It's distressingly common in the army at times, too. Thankfully it only rarely ends in an actual death."
Alistair flushed slightly.
"Some of us have good reason to wish other people dead," Brann said, an edge of hostility in his voice. Alistair guessed that he, like Tisha, would have been just as happy to see Loghain dead.
"I never said it wasn't without reason," Loghain said. "Even perhaps quite good ones, in some cases. But good reason or not, most military establishments – and the quasi-military ones like the wardens and templars as well – frown on the idea of killing off your superior officers or compatriots. Punishments for such tends to be rather stringent, therefore. Alistair, you've been reviewing the regulations. Have you reached the part that deals with such offences yet?"
"Yes," he admitted, wishing he hadn't.
"Summarize them, please."
Alistair did. Lem looked white-faced, Brann a little greener than even his tattoo explained, and Wilf mostly puzzled when he was done. Loghain's expression hadn't changed in the least.
"Harsher terms of punishment than the army uses, but as I've explained to Alistair on a related subject before, the army tends mostly to be volunteers, not a mix of people conscripted against their will and hardened criminals. The Grey Wardens' rules are meant to be more of a deterrent than a hard-and-fast punishment, though if it does become necessary to make a point, they make it quite nastily. I prefer to be more lenient, unless I am convinced there is no other choice. You will note that I did not have you flogged as described after your attempt on Nathaniel's life, for instance," he added, directing his final words to Brann. Though also, Alistair noticed, reassuring Lem by doing so. Loghain was nothing if not efficient; if someone thing could serve multiple useful purposes, he would do or say it, it seemed.
"For which I'm just as grateful as I was at being made a Grey Warden," Brann said.
Loghain actually smiled. "Which is to say, hardly at all."
Brann grinned, and nodded.
Lem snorted, and gave his knife a final wipe with a soft cloth before sheathing it. "You're all crazy," he said.
Loghain smiled crookedly. "I suppose we are. But hunting darkspawn is hardly an occupation for those who are entirely sane, is it? But it needs to be done, or horrors happen, such as what happened to those two youngsters your group tried to save."
Lem paused, then nodded. "A good point. I'd still rather be out hunting deer or tending a trap line than hunting darkspawn though."
"Wouldn't we all," Loghain said. "How are the deer lately? It's been too long since I last had a chance to do any real hunting. And certainly no time for it this trip, even if I'd brought my bow."
The two men ended up in a lengthy discussion about the condition of the local herds over the winter just past, meadows where they commonly fed at certain times, tracks, fewmets, and blinds, with Lem talking about hunting a particular buck up a hillside somewhere that Loghain apparently knew well, right down to the turn in a trail by a rock-slide where Lem had finally lost the animal.
"It doesn't look safe to cross, but there's a large boulder two-thirds of the way up the western side, and a game trail that passes around the back of it and then across the scree; you can't see it from below, the shape of the hillside hides it. They cross the slide there, and get into the woods on the other side," he told Lem. "I only found it myself because I came out of the forest in time to see the doe I was tracking that day crossing the last bit of the slide. There's a lovely spot back in there, where a stream coming down from higher up the slope falls into a pond. Beautiful place, when the sun hits it just right in mid-afternoon. Lots of rabbits in the woods there."
Lem smiled. "I'd like to see it some time. Though I have a suspicion that being a Grey Warden makes it pretty unlikely."
"Sadly, yes. It's been years since I last had the time to get up there myself, even before being conscripted."
Lem looked surprised. "Conscripted? I thought you'd volunteered."
"No, he didn't volunteer," Alistair said, exchanging a look with Loghain.
Loghain smiled crookedly. "Shall you tell it, or shall I?" he asked dryly.
"You tell it," Alistair said, suddenly wondering how it had looked from Loghain's side of things. He knew how it had looked to him.
Loghain sighed, and then to Alistair's surprise stretched out on one side on the ground, braced partially upright on one elbow, somehow managing to look comfortable and at his ease despite still being dressed in full armour. "I'm sure most of you have heard at least the bones of the matter," he said. "The Hero of Ferelden and I, in an epic confrontation in the historic Landsmeet chamber, before a gathering of the finest nobles of Ferelden," he said, and fell silent for a moment, eyes unfocusing slightly. "She was a small woman, much smaller than you'd imagine from the way the stories talk of her. Tanned and freckled and fly-bitten from the road. Someone had tried to clean her up, do something with her hair, make her look more ladylike, but it was like sticking jewels and gilt on the hilt of a sword; it's the sharp blade you should be looking at, not the pretty trimmings."
He smiled crookedly. "I thought I was watching the blade, but I think I'd forgotten that a good sword has more than one edge. I was tired and worn out myself, terrified that this slight little woman might have done something to my daughter, who'd disappeared under mysterious circumstances just a few days before. My judgement was... not at its best, shall we say. Despite having seen evidence of just how ruthless and deadly she could be when provoked, I challenged her to single combat. I suppose I thought it would be an easy win; it wasn't. It was instead a very resounding and shamefully rapid loss."
He fell silent again, plucking a bit of grass and toying with it a moment before continuing. "I thought she'd kill me, of course. She had no reason to keep me alive; I was her enemy. I'd tried to have her killed, I'd had her imprisoned, I'd done everything in my considerable power to eliminate her and her companions. And she'd survived it all. Then this Orlesian warden came forward, and suggested that I should be conscripted instead," he said grimly, then sighed. "I sometimes wonder if Anora knew that the Joining might kill me, when she urged Solona to go ahead with it. Perhaps she did, and felt that at least some chance at my living was better than seeing me killed right there before her eyes. In any event, Solona decided that conscripting me was an excellent idea."
He smiled again, and looked over at Brann. "I was no more thankful for it than you are. Nor was I the only one unappreciative of her decision," he added, and looked over at Alistair.
Alistair flushed. "I hated her for it. Becoming a Grey Warden had meant so much to me... I thought it was important to her, too. And then for her to turn around and make you a Grey Warden, after everything you'd done to try and eliminate the last of us! I couldn't understand how she could do that," he said. And looked away from all of them for a moment, having to force out the next few words. "So I abandoned her. I failed my duty as a Grey Warden and left, not just the Landsmeet chamber but Ferelden itself. I ran away."
"It was important to her," Loghain said quietly. "Important enough that she ignored her own hatred of me, and conscripted me, because there were only three wardens in all of Ferelden at that point, and having a fourth made it just that little bit more likely that we would succeed in killing the archdemon, though even four barely improved the odds, which were very bad. Though of course with Alistair leaving, we were only three anyway."
Loghain sighed, and sat upright again. "I suppose I was rather in shock at events for a while. So much had changed, so quickly. I had lost everything, I thought at first. My king, my daughter, my position, my chance to save Ferelden. I wished, more than once, that the Joining ceremony had killed me, since at least then everything would be over with and I wouldn't have to see Ferelden overrun by darkspawn, or 'rescued' by Orlesians who'd then neglect to return home. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, as much of a surly, ungrateful ass as I possibly could be, just as much as any of the wardens under me have ever been," he said, and then smiled. "I think Solona wished more than once that she could turn back time and redo her decision differently." His eyes flicked towards Alistair again, but he didn't speak at all of the second reason, other than his own ungratefulness, that she might have wished to do so.
"Eventually I realized that I still had a chance to save Ferelden. That circumstances and context had changed, but that there might still be hope, as vanishingly small as chances seemed that we could pull it off. And Solona... she hated leading, but by the Maker was she good at it. She reminded me of Maric, more than once, in her capacity to draw the best out of people, and of Rowan, in her devotion to duty. By the time we reached Redcliffe, I was... well, not happy with how things had turned out, but at least willing to follow her orders and hoping she'd prove capable of doing what must be done. And she was," he said, sadly. "As she proved on the roof of Fort Drakon, finishing off the Archdemon that Riordan had forced down. Both of them heroes, managing to kill an Archdemon with far fewer wardens and far less loss of life – even counting all the dead in places like Ostagar, Lothering and Denerim – than had ever been managed previously. And leaving me in the unenviable position as the last remaining warden alive in all of Ferelden," he said, and grimaced. "Which promptly had me saddled with the title of Warden-Commander, almost as many responsibilities as I'd had as General of the Armies, and with almost no men to satisfy the needs of the position, and those few on loan. And then dead, before I ever even got to meet them."
"I'd heard about that," Lem spoke up. "Darkspawn attacked in the night, or something like that?"
"Yes. And the wardens apparently didn't have any kind of a watch in place, and were killed to a man. There were very few survivors, and those entirely among the non-wardens, which I think says much about the training and preparedness of the wardens we'd been loaned. Their dregs, most likely, though not having had any chance to meet them myself I might well be wrong on that. Though you'd think if any of them were skilled as Grey Wardens they could have done at least as well at surviving as one very drunken dwarf did; Oghren was on his feet happily slaying darkspawn without even a scratch on him when we came across him. Granted he'd had a lot of recent experience against the creatures, but then I have to ask why the wardens we'd been sent didn't, if that was indeed what made the difference."
Loghain frowned. "Though I may be being too hard on them. By what we found out later, the wardens were very specifically targeted by the darkspawn. Men like Oghren and Anders might have survived simply because the darkspawn largely ignored them, in favour of seeking out the Orlesian wardens. In any event, whatever their faults may or may not have been, I ended up starting out with only barely more wardens to work with than had defeated the Blight, and me the most experienced of the lot. We still have only a fraction as many wardens as are needed to adequately patrol a country this large, much less deal with the darkspawn in the Deep Roads as I'm committed to."
"Which would be why you're not exactly sorry about me and Wilf and that married couple ending up wardens," Lem said.
"Far from it. Sorry for the circumstances that led to it, yes, but I'd be a damned fool to regret having a few more wardens to deal with the darkspawn. I need more. Queen Anora has given permission for me to recruit more aggressively, and to begin a second Grey Warden establishment here in the south. If any of you know of anyone who might actually volunteer to be a Grey Warden, then I encourage you to talk or write to them. I'll conscript as well, since I don't really have any other choice, but I'll have to stick to mostly criminals for that to prevent an anti-warden backlash, and I'm sure all of you can see that wouldn't lead to us having the best possible people for the job."
"I'd agree with that," Brann said, frowning. "Someone like me, who was just a small-time smuggler, or Edrick, who killed by accident, that's one thing. There's those that think killing or half-killing someone is just a bit of fun, like the only people who are real are themselves. And I'd rather be sure that I can turn my back on the Grey Warden beside me, without having to worry that he'll stick his knife in just because he can."
"Exactly," Loghain said approvingly. "It's like those rules; I'd rather not recruit the types of person where I'd have to seriously consider ever applying those sorts of punishments. Doubtless we'll end up with one or two of that sort anyway, but the more Grey Wardens we have who want to be Grey Wardens, who, like Alistair, consider it an honour, or at least a job worth doing, and not a punishment, the better."
Alistair flushed as everyone turned and looked at him. "I'm not sure I consider it so much an honour any more," he said slowly. "It was for me, but that was me. It isn't, for everyone. I've even seen people who thought it was an honour, right up until they realized what becoming a warden entailed, and then changed their minds entirely. And I guess it wasn't a choice any of you would have made, if you'd had any choice at all. But I do think it's a job worth doing."
Brann and Lem both nodded slowly. "I suppose I can agree with that much, after everything I've seen since becoming a Grey Warden," Brann agreed. "I'd still rather be a smuggler than a warden, but since I am a warden, well... at least I don't have to worry about keeping a roof over my head or food on the table. And there's far worse fates I could have got stuck with over the last few years."
Lem frowned thoughtfully. "Nathaniel took us to see the bodies, those of us who survived the joining. Told us what the darkspawn had been trying to do to that poor girl. Said that part of being a Grey Warden is helping to prevent things like that from ever happening. Yeah. I'd say it's a job worth doing. Though I'd still rather be a hunter," he added, smiling thinly.
Wilf spoke up next, surprising all of them. "I like being a Grey Warden," he said. "They don't need me much in the mill any more. Reet is smarter about how things work than I am, so it's going to be her mill some day, and now she has Timothy to help out and he does a lot of what I used to do. People say she and Timothy are good for looking after me, like I can't do anything else but work in the mill. Like I'm no use outside of it. But now I can fight darkspawn, and that looks after everyone. I like that better."
Loghain smiled warmly at Wilf. "And I'm glad to have you," he said. "Your father always told me how hard of a worker you were, and I'm sure you'll make an excellent warden."
Lem grinned. "I'll say! He's damned frightening swinging that mallet; it's better than having a wall between me and the darkspawn, they never even got close to me. I'm way better with a bow than at knife-work, and a bow's not exactly a good weapon once they get close-in. We made a pretty good team."
Wilf smiled, looking happy at the praise.
Podge walked up to the group just then, looking tired out. "Food's about to be served," he told them all, then turned to Loghain. "Captain Dorn says we should be heading out in about an hour, once everything is washed up and packed again."
"Right," Loghain said, and rose to his feet. "Let's go claim our share of dinner before the soldiers eat it all. Damned bunch of walking bellies. Almost as bad as Grey Wardens are."