16. Vir Tanadahl

The boar rushed at her, but Meila kept her bow level. It already had two shafts in its flank, causing it to skid slightly in the swamp mud. She loosed the next arrow, which landed in the animal's shoulder.

The boar tossed its head, changing its course to go wide around her. She pulled another arrow from her quiver as it tore through the foliage to her right, grunting and squealing. She nocked the arrow and was about to draw the bowstring when it happened again.

Burning, tight and hot, tore through her. It always started in the vicinity of her stomach, but then rushed through her with the swiftness and relentlessness of a mighty river, sweeping away her consciousness for the brief moment when she knew nothing but tearing pain.

She clenched her teeth so as not to cry out, her eyes shutting without her consent and her arrow dropping from her fingers, even while her left hand clenched on her bow. Slowly—oh so very slowly—the pain receded.

While she was recovering, the boar tore out of the foliage, slamming its tusk into her leg, tearing a gash in it. She dodged back before it could do any more damage, then deftly pulled out another arrow and released it at point-blank range into its eye.

The boar finally collapsed, skidding heavily through the mud. Limping slightly, Meila stowed her bow and knelt down beside it, careful to keep her injured leg out of the swamp water. She retrieved the arrows and inspected each one for cracks or bends. Any arrows deemed worthy were returned to her quiver, while the rest were stowed in her bag to be disposed of later (A Dalish did not leave a trail, after all, and Dalish arrows did tend to stand out in the wilderness if left just lying about).

Only then did she allow herself to take out her hunting knife and cut off part of its tusk. This, she stowed in a special pouch at her belt, to be later carved into a bead. Then, she hefted the boar onto her shoulders—doing her best not to think about how her body quivered under the weight as it very well should not have—and turned to start back to camp. It had been a couple days since she'd visited, and the shemlen tended to get uppity if she didn't check in every now and then.

When she had first arrived at Ostagar, she had roamed the wilds for the better part of a week. When she'd returned to the human camp to check whether Duncan had returned, everyone had been shocked to see her alive. They had assumed she'd wandered off and died, and several Wardens had attempted to impress upon her the danger of wandering the Wilds alone. She had ignored them, but had nonetheless agreed to return every couple days.

She didn't really care much what the shemlen thought of her roaming the Korcari Wilds, but she had made a promise to Keeper Marethari that she would live and fight the darkspawn in Tamlen's memory. And as that required that she become a Grey Warden, she had to play by their rules. Occasionally.

It had been a month, now, and she did not honestly see why the shemlen feared the forest so much. Certainly, it was a bit swampier than Meila was used to, and she did occasionally run into roving bands of wild folk, but any obstacles were easily avoided or overcome by one as at home in the wilderness as she was.

There were the occasional darkspawn, of course… but after what they'd done to herself and Tamlen, she was all too eager to strike against them. When she found a band, she would follow it, picking off the individuals one-by-one from a safe distance. Then, when the band noticed her, she simply retreated into hiding until they had given up the chase. It was then only a matter of tracking them and once again picking off the members from a distance.

After a month of doing so, she liked to think she was making some mark upon the beasts.

Tracking her way back to camp wasn't particularly difficult… one simply had to find the streams of shemlen "scouting parties" and soon Ostagar's gate into the Wilds appeared from among the foliage.

The gate was closed this time, as it was every other time. Rather than ask the human guards on the other side to open it—a truly embarrassing prospect—she instead walked to the familiar crooked tree that grew right beside the gate. Its branches reached up over the twenty foot wall that separated the camp from the Wilds: tall enough for her purposes.

All it took was a bit of rope to pulley the boar carcass up into the tree. Then, she tied off the rope and followed it up, climbing deftly from branch to branch. The injury in her leg pulled uncomfortably as she climbed, but she merely ignored the pain, as she did the swirling dizziness that was a near constant companion these days.

Then, she was looking over the top of the wall, perched in the tree while she gazed over the Ostagar camp. Tents littered the grounds, of course, many flying flags with symbols or pictures on them. Humans swarmed among the tents... talking, eating, training. None of them doing anything particularly productive. There had been a couple small battles against the darkspawn since Meila had arrived, but the humans really seemed to spend most of their time sitting around, wasting resources.

Worse than that, however, were the flat-ears. They were servants and messengers nearly to a man, and that thought twisted Meila's gut. How did none of them see that they were still slaves, merely with a nicer cage? They spoke like shemlen, walked like shemlen… even cursed by the shemlen Maker. They had no concept of self outside what the shemlen had made them into… no sense of history or culture.

She ached for them. She pitied them. She hated them. She wanted to see them all freed at the same time she wanted to destroy such echoes of past entrapment. It was a jarring contradiction, and she was beginning to understand why Paivel had always said that their duty was to educate the flat-ears. They didn't realize all that they had given up… all that they could be again.

But changing them was a task no elf could do alone.

Meila levered the boar up and over the wall and untied its rope, and it fell on the other side with a heavy, wet plop. The guards near the gate startled and spun, even as Meila swung over the wall herself and landed on the ground beside the boar.

"Maker's breath… stop doing that!"

Meila did not acknowledge the humans, merely picked up her boar and made her way to the Grey Warden camp. It was nestled amongst the other pavilions, a relatively small collection of cookfires and tents, at least compared to the many other armies present.

There was a 'mess tent' near the Warden camp, which serviced it and the nearby forces with hard tack and gruel. That was where she took her catch, raising her chin against the stares that the shemlen always gave her when she was in camp.

Then, when she was within sight of the tent, a particularly vicious wave of dizziness overtook her, and she stumbled a step before she managed to get her knees locked. She couldn't show signs of weakness… not here.

"What the… Andraste's knickers, Meila!"

Of all the times for her self-appointed minder to appear... Fen'Harel must have been laughing at her.

And there he was: the obnoxious blond human who kept claiming to be responsible for the new recruits. He was in front of her then, helping keep the boar from slipping off her shoulders. Still fighting off the increased dizziness, she could only glare at him stonily.

"What? Oh, were you carrying this?" he said. "And why not, since it's only the same weight you are?"

"I am hardly delicate," she said shortly.

"No, but you are sick. And… for the love of… is that a leg wound?"

"I don't need your help," she said, and pulled away from him, dizziness be damned. She masked another stumble as best she could and continued on to the tent.

There was another human with the blond shemlen this time: one Meila recognized as one of the Wardens who had left with Duncan. Good; perhaps Duncan was back, and she could get this whole ordeal over with.

"Alistair, is this typical?" the other asked.

"Hm? Oh, yes, Rehg, it is. This is what she does. She disappears for days at a time, and returns with something twice her size slung across her back. I think she thinks we're incapable of feeding ourselves."

She dropped the boar off with the cooks. They were always startled by her arrival, but then they took pains to thank her profusely for whatever she brought for the table. While she appreciated the sentiment, it nonetheless rankled to be so lauded for something she was supposed to be doing anyway. She was a hunter. It was her duty to supply the clan (or camp, she supposed)… so why did they always seem so shocked when she did so?

She stepped back out of the tent, and noticed with some annoyance that the two Wardens were still there, waiting for her.

"One of the recruits is a healer," said the stranger. "We should really take you back to camp to get that leg looked at."

She stiffened at the tone of his voice… like he was speaking of a pet that had gotten its muzzle scratched.

The blond snorted a laugh. "No, no. That's not how you talk to her." He stepped forward, sweeping a bow. "Meila, might we perhaps suggest, as respectful equals, that you maybe could consider accompanying us back to camp… if you're not too busy, of course?"

"Don't patronize me, shemlen."

Alistair straightened and let out an exaggerated sigh. "There's just no winning, with her."

Even so, she followed them as the pair started back toward their camp. Walking around the swamp with an open wound was ill advised, after all. She couldn't bear to have it get infected, and then be forced to rely on the shemlen for succor. No, better to head it off now.

They weaved their way through the Warden camp, finally coming to stop at a small pitch next to a cluster of tents. On the pitch, a durgen'len woman was leading a group of the camp's Grey Wardens (as well as the human named Ser Jory) through some sort of training exercise. It involved them pushing at one another while holding onto long poles, and that was all Meila really cared to understand about it.

Next to the pitch were five people. Two were the other Wardens that had left with Duncan (though not Duncan himself, she noted). They were speaking with another durgen'len, who held some sort of metal device between them and motioned to one rather sharp-looking edge as she watched. This one had a curving tattoo on one cheek; she wondered if it carried as much meaning as her own did.

Beside them sat a dark-skinned shemlen woman in robes. She worked at a mortar and pestle amidst several stacks of pressed leaves and dried roots. Meila had seen the Keeper at work often enough to know an herbalist when she saw one.

Some distance away from the rest of the group stood a robed elf. Meila knew he was a flat-ear just by the clothes he wore and the way he watched the humans without showing any apparent awareness of their crimes. However, he stood with a particular defiance that had been lacking in the other flat-ears she'd seen in camp, as if he had never, and would never, bow and scrape as other flat-ears did. That, Meila could respect.

What she could not respect, however, were the faint tattoos that were scrawled across the flat-ear's face. Were those supposed to be vallaslin? If so, they certainly weren't in any of the traditional designs, and this flat-ear looked to be too young to have earned the blood writing the proper way. It made a mockery of the culture of the elvhen, and only her own silent repetition of Paivel's lessons about tolerating the flat-ears' ignorance, so it might one day be rectified, stopped her from gutting him for insolence right there.

The flat-ear stood separate from the group, watching the combat practice with a bored air. Thus, he was the first to notice the trio's approach. When he spotted Meila, he stared openly. Like a child confronted with his first sylvan. When she shot him a cold look that communicated her displeasure with him, his eyes narrowed in return.

Meila ignored the challenge in them and turned to the blond human, Alistair. "Has Duncan returned?"

"What? Oh, uh… no. Not as such." He made a face. "I'm starting to think he just doesn't want to be here, to be honest. Can't say I blame him, getting stuck between the king and Loghain as he is. Must be a lot like getting stuck between a wet cat and a hungry dog." He glanced back at her with a smirk. "Or between you and any human, actually."

She stared flatly at him, wondering if it would be a betrayal of her promise to scalp one of the Grey Wardens who was supposed to train her.

"Aaaaand now you're scary again. Seems to be a pattern." Alistar turned to the group ahead of them, and Meila noticed that the Wardens on the pitch had stopped their practice to watch their approach. "All right, everyone. Allow me to introduce Meila…" He trailed off, then turned to her with brows furrowed. "Actually, I don't know your last name."

She didn't deign to respond, just waited for him to get on with it.

"Right. Anyway, she's another of Duncan's recruits, though you wouldn't know it with how little time she actually spends in camp."

"Well met, Meila," the female dwarf stepped forward with a bow of her head. "I am Marnan."

"Oh my! Your leg!" That was from the herbalist. The woman picked herself up and hurried forward, reaching out a hand and invading Meila's personal space without so much as a how-do-you-do.

Meila skittered back a bit too quickly from the human's upraised hand. "Do not touch me, shemlen," she snapped.

Everyone stared, including the herbalist. Then, the male durgen'len snorted. "I don't know what that word means, but I'm pretty sure it was an insult."

"What's a 'shemlen'?" the one named Marnan asked the general group. As if they would know.

Then, to Meila's surprise, one of them said, "It means 'quickling.'" Meila stared at the herbalist, who still stood only a few paces in front of her. Now, the human was studying her avidly. "It's a very old elven word, referencing humans' shorter lifespans. Or at least, they were shorter at the time… it's said that elves lost their immortality because of proximity to us." She paused and glanced back at the male dwarf. "So I suppose, depending on context, it could certainly be an insult."

Meila was absolutely astounded. This… this human…? "You know my peoples' history?"

The human shrugged and smiled wryly. "Well, some. Only what Brother Genitivi detailed in The Travels of a Chantry Scholar… But he wrote as an outsider, so I imagine there must have been much he missed." The woman brightened, her voice picking up speed as she spoke. "You're Dalish, right? I can tell by your vallaslin. Am I saying that right? Vallaslin?"

"I… yes."

"I've never seen one before, though I've seen them illustrated. Which Creator does yours represent?"

Meila took a moment of the ensuing silence to recover from that onslaught. She could feel the gazes of the others on her, and got the distinct impression that several of them found something humorous in this situation. Still, Meila found it hard not to stare back at the human who was asking such informed questions about her culture. Finally, with not a little wonder, she said, "You really want to know, don't you?"

The human nodded enthusiastically. "Elven perspectives are so rare among Ferelden scholarship, since the Imperium took such great pains to wipe it out…" She paused, her eyes widening. "Oh no… I probably shouldn't have mentioned that to a Dalish. I'm sorry."

"No," Meila said, still somewhat in awe of this human. "It is good to hear a shemlen acknowledge it." The human relaxed, and Meila found herself doing so as well… just a bit. "As to your question, my vallaslin is a dedication to Andruil, Lady of the Hunt."

The woman stayed silent, as if waiting to hear more. Meila could not do anything but continue.

She felt a small smile creep onto her face as she spoke of familiar matters. "Through my vallaslin, Andruil guides my bow and gives me the wits and keen eyes needed to pursue my quarries, both on the hunt and off. By bearing Andruil's markings, I am sworn above others to uphold the Vir Tanadahl—the Way of the Three Trees."

"The Way of the Three Trees?" the human queried curiously.

Meila nodded and thrust out one arm. "First, Vir Assan, the Way of the Arrow. Fly straight and do not waver. Second," and at this she added her other arm, spread apart to suggest holding a bow, "Vir Bor'assan, the Way of the Bow. Bend but never break. Third," and here she turned her palms up and spread her arms wide, "Vir Adahlen, the Way of the Forest. Together we are stronger than one." She dropped her arms. "These are the Ways that all Dalish live by."

"Wow… that is…" the human seemed to be getting misty-eyed. "Thank you. For sharing that, I mean."

Meila nodded, though she had the distinct feeling that she should be thanking the human… as absurd a notion as that was. "If you wish, you may approach now. I will not… retreat from you."

"Oh, right!" She flushed and knelt down, hesitantly reaching out to touch Meila's injured leg. While the warm itchiness of healing magic rushed through her—soothing more than the leg, to be honest—a familiar voice spoke up.

"Wow," Alistair whistled, and Meila was startled to find that everyone was still staring at them. "Felicity, just so you know, you got her to say more words just now than I think I've ever heard from her combined. That. Was. Awesome."

The male durgen'len looked incredulous. "I can't believe we found someone who can actually tolerate the mage's nosy nattering."

The herbalist, Felicity, finished healing Meila's leg (the Dalish inspected it: it was as good as new) and stood up. Her face was flushed. "I'll have you know I'm not nosy… merely curious. It's not a sin to seek knowledge of things you don't understand."

"I would agree," Meila said. When Felicity smiled at her in gratitude, Meila nodded.

"Still, bravo." Alistair turned his lopsided grin to Meila, like they were friends or something. "So why didn't you just share any of that before?"

Meila felt the barest of smirks flit across her face, but that alone was enough to make the blond Warden goggle. "Simple, shemlen." She turned and started away, content now to return to her hunting. "You never asked."