(All right, this is the last Garott chapter before the other Wardens arrive, I promise. I just need to close up a personal arc and establish something for waaaay later. Thank you for your indulgence. XD )
75. Acting the Warden
When he'd been the local drunk's punk runt growing up in Dust Town, he'd never have dreamed that he'd one day be out in the Deep Roads, leading an official patrol on a sweep through the royal house's ancestral thaig. Yet here he was, doing exactly that. Fate had a sense of humor, sometimes.
Garott adjusted the final winch on his current mechanism: a beauty of a trap that spanned an entire tunnel entrance. When triggered by a pressure plate, a heavy blade would swoop across the opening, neatly bisecting any nasty beasts passing through it. Best of all, it was easily reset by anyone who had simply been told where the crank was.
"I still do not agree with setting traps across entire tunnels, Warden," the patrol's captain said hesitantly. "What if our own men were to stumble into one?" He was a Warrior caste dwarf, usually proud as a prince, but Garott in all his Grey Warden glory was apparently enough to cow him.
The rest of the dozen men in the patrol weren't much better, either. All these high-born dwarves turned meek and deferential around his casteless-born hide. Garott was getting too tired of it to find it very amusing anymore.
"Then maybe your boys shouldn't be 'stumbling' through the Deep Roads. I dunno what a bunch of strapping Warriors would be doing stumbling anywhere. They take tips from Oghren, do they?"
The aforementioned berserker brayed a laugh and took a hearty swig from his flask as if to prove Garott right. Oghren and Sten stood off to one side, watching Garott put the finishing touches on his trap. Oghren seemed to be enjoying himself, though Garott suspected that had more to do with whatever was in that flask than anything that was actually happening in the sober world. Whatever… Garott could handle drunks just fine.
Sten, meanwhile, seemed more content than he'd ever been. Whatever crazy logic the Qunari operated under, this current business of tromping through the Deep Roads with the Orzammar patrols seemed to be satisfying his expectation for whatever a Warden was supposed to do.
Garott had been at it for a week now, accompanying the patrols deeper and deeper into the lost thaigs, and setting up all sorts of goodies for the hapless dawkspawn who wandered the roads.
Oghren wanted them to press deeper, toward the old Ortan Thaig, where Branka had last been seen. However, Garott wasn't one to take unnecessary risks, especially when he was dragging two non-Wardens into the most Tainted place in Thedas. Garott was a planner at heart, and most of his plans involved the two warriors not dying a slow, horrible death by Taint poisoning. Thus, he kept within a couple days of Orzammar, securing the tunnels closer to the populace.
Still, it was better than staying in the sodding city. Ages ago, being bowed and scraped to had delighted him, but it had started to ring hollow after his heart-to-heart with his mother. What good was being treated like a sodding Paragon if everything else stayed the same?
By the Stone, this whole Grey Warden hero-of-Thedas business was going to his head.
"My apologies, Warden. I just mean that-"
"I know what you meant." Garott stepped away from his mechanism and turned his attention entirely toward the patrolmen. "You want your boys' strolls through the Deep Roads to be clean and worry-free, right? Well, that's too bad, because that aint gonna happen. I'm just evening the odds a bit… making it just as dangerous for those blighters as it is for us. You still got a problem with that, captain?"
The Warrior hung his head. "No, Warden."
Oghren laughed again, and Sten's expression was dangerously close to a smirk. Glad he had their approval, at least. "Good. Next time you think about opening your mouth, think about whether you have any idea what you're talking about, huh?"
He turned and started off down the next tunnel, already pulling the next bit of scrap metal out of his pack. With the sounds of clanking metal and Oghren's rumbling chuckles, the patrol fell into step behind him.