Five

"Wardens coming in! We've got wounded!"

The commotion was coming from the south gate and the glade. When Halvas had first heard the shouting and heard the horn from the wall, he had run over, sword in hand, expecting an attack. Instead, Augustin and his men had opened the way for a group of Wardens who were stumbling in.

"What happened?" Augustin asked as they limped in.

At their lead was the new recruit Julius, his blue shirt stained with black blood and his face showing fresh scratches. He was helping to carry another man, whose arm was wrapped over his shoulder and who carried a deep gash in his abdomen. Halvas recognized the man, that was Beckett and he was covered in blood, most of it looking like his own. His face was ashen and sagging. Along with them were four other Wardens in varying states of injury. One of the men had his helm smashed in on the left side, the metal dented so deeply that he couldn't get the thing off of his head. He was lucky to still be conscious after taking a blow from whatever had been strong enough to do that.

"They went out secretly before dawn to seek vengeance on the darkspawn for Weisshaupt," the former mayor said, his voice gruff and tired from the effort of carrying his comrade back. "I saw them skulking around the camp and followed them out. Good that I did, because they bit off a hell of a lot more than they could chew. Helped cut them a way off the old swamp road and made it into a ruin, but then the blight swallowed the entry and had trapped us there between the darkspawn and the black water. We were stuck there 'til Rook came through and cut us a way out, Maker bless him."

Flynn the healer was there and so was Ilona, who on top of serving as quartermaster was also the medic for the order. She had the rank and split the injured, sending the more lightly wounded with the young healer while she had some of the others carry Beckett back toward her camp.

As they broke apart, Halvas stepped in and grabbed Julius by the arm.

"Who's idea was that?" he asked harshly.

"Beckett, I think, Joiner," the mayor said. "I overheard him with the others. Couldn't cope with the fact that he lived at Weisshaupt and the others died. Felt he needed to prove himself, to pay back the darkspawn for what they did. Nearly got him and the others killed. If I hadn't followed them, Maker, I don't want to think what might have happened."

Beckett wasn't a hothead like Thorne. He came from a good family in eastern Orlais and had served in the Orlesian army during the Civil War ten years back. He earned his way up to captain, had his own company of men to look after. He might have continued to serve and advance, except for the problem that he had been fighting on the wrong side of the succession crisis. When Grand Duke Gaspard had lost his head, Beckett had lost his commission when the empress purged the army of his former commanders. With his command stripped from him, he had joined with the Inquisition to keep up the fight in his homeland.

It was in the Inquisition where he had met with the Wardens and had ultimately decided to take his oaths. They had sent him north to the Anderfels and Halvas had the honor of joining him. He had come with two others from Orlais. All three had made it, but Beckett was the only one assigned to stay at Weisshaupt, the others were sent abroad to the Free Marches. He was still young, but he had served well. The others called him "Captain," and they trusted his instinct in the field.

With the gate shut and no danger behind them, Halvas sheathed his sword and stomped back through town, his boots splashing in the water in the streets as he headed back toward the east gate. Ilona had cleared out one of the nearby lean-tos and was working on her patient who was lying on the ground. Beckett was groaning loudly as Ilona cleaned and inspected his wounds and bandaged him up. Halvas sat in his position atop the wall, eyes turned toward the lean-to and not the caves, until finally Ilona emerged from under the roof, her hands and arms stained red from her labor.

She exchanged some words with her assistant who ran off on some errand, wiped her brow with the mostly clean forearm on her left arm, and then walked off, presumably to clean herself up, leaving her patient alone. When she had gone, Halvas got up and quickly strode over, glancing left and right to make sure he wasn't followed.

Beckett's midsection was wrapped and he was lying on his back, his hands folded over his abdomen and his eyes closed. His mouth was caught in a grimace, lips quivering as he tried to bear the pain. Ilona had stitched up a wide gash across the right side of his face, one that would leave a nasty scar when it healed, a reminder of the day he almost died while out doing something reckless.

Halvas stepped over him, feet straddling the young Warden, as he bent and grabbed Beckett's shirt at the breast, clenching it tightly as he crouched down, shaking the man awake. Beckett's face twisted in pain and his eyes shot out, filled with fear.

"What were you thinking?" Halvas demanded, his anger flaring as he gave the young man a shake. "You trying to get yourself killed?"

"Whetstone, I–"

Halvas didn't wait for him, giving him another shake that caused him to grimace once more. "You could have got yourself killed! You could have got the others killed! What possessed you to do something so stupid?"

Beckett didn't even try to explain himself now, recognizing that Halvas wasn't going to hear him even if he tried. Instead he started weeping, which only made Halvas shake him again and shout at him to stop. He couldn't, though, as he gibbered, as Halvas throttled him, shaking him back and forth by the hold on his shirt as if he was trying to rattle some sense back into his head.

"Halvas! What are you doing?" Ilona's voice was a shout behind him, and he felt her hand on his shoulder pulling him back. He let go of Beckett, the younger man flopping back to the threadbare mat, wailing in both pain and woe. Halvas stood up and backed off as Ilona pulled him away and back outside.

"What is wrong with you?" she asked, now chiding him. Elona was one of the few elves left. She had grown up in the alienage in Denerim. She was just a girl when the plague hit during the Fifth Blight, and she was one of dozens of elves who were rounded up by Tevinter mages who came to Ferelden promising a cure but had only instead been a front for a slaving operation. She was taken north to Tevinter as a child and had lived in bondage for seven years after being purchased by an alchemist in Vyrantium.

She had been freed when Tevinter officially denounced the illicit scheme as a diplomatic show of faith to the statesmen of the reconstructed Ferelden – more due to their interest in re-establishing legitimate trade with Denerim than any actual regret for absconding with a bunch of city elves – and identified those elves from Denerim who had been listed on the slave manifests. Once freed, she had done legitimate work for pitiable wages as a Liberati at an alienage hospice, where she had treated a wounded Warden returning from a Deep Roads sortie. She had been impressed with Ilona's work and offered her a chance at a new life, one that came with great purpose at the cost of great sacrifice.

"Forgive me, healer," Halvas said, snapping himself out of his own wrath. The music in his head swelled up, pleased almost as he gave into his animalistic rage. He lifted his hands before his chest as a sign that he had calmed himself. "I… I was reminded of dark times from my own past. I lost control of myself. I have no excuse for my behavior."

Ilona glared disapprovingly, but then sighed and waved it off. She looked exhausted, as all the Wardens in Lavendel did. Her face was drawn, her eyes heavy and ringed in dark circles. She had treated many casualties from Weisshaupt, and she had closed the eyes on too many of them before sending them to pyre.

"These are hard times, for all of us, as hard on the mind as the body," she said, speaking not just for the Wardens she served, but no doubt for herself too. "You of all people should know better."

"Apologies," Halvas said, bowing his head shamefully. "Beckett, he is one that I joined. They… I think of them like my children, sometimes, for both the good and ill."

"Then talk to him, Elfhorn," Ilona said. "He is suffering, as are many of our young Wardens. They look up to you. They need you more than ever for guidance, in the face of this defeat. You need to be strong, stronger than them, for them."

With that, Ilona returned to her duties, again leaving him alone. Halvas considered going back to his post at the east wall, but his gaze was drawn back toward the open lean-to, and the wounded Warden laying on its floor. She was right. He had seen victory and defeat in equal measure. He had watched Wardens die during their joining. He had suffered losses in the Deep Roads, lost friends to claw and tooth and wicked blade. Some of these Wardens, the young ones, had never had to face the harsh reality of their service yet. And to suffer Weisshaupt as their first, they might never see such a defeat again for the rest of their lives.

Halvas stepped back under the sloped roof and looked down at Beckett, curled on his mat. He was still weeping quietly. Halvas sat down at his side, hanging his forearms over bent knees.

"I know why you did what you did," Halvas started, staring straight ahead, at nothing.

"Long ago, back when I was still with my clan, some of the hunters and I would wander out into the mountains, looking for dwarf doors in the stone. One day, in the late autumn, we found one. It was behind some brush – in the spring or summer when things were growing, you never would have seen it, it would be hidden behind the leaves – and it was just barely cracked open. The rock had split and the door was open just enough that you could slide through. I convinced the others that we should go inside, to see what we could find."

Galas would have followed him anywhere if he asked. He had just gotten his vallaslin and was happy to take on any sortie outside of the camp, hoping that he'd get the opportunity to prove himself as more than just the son of a father who had abandoned his clan in favor of the life of a sellsword, a drunken one, at that.

Turion didn't want anything to do with dwarves, but any well-placed insult to his manhood could bend him to do anything. When Halvas had called him a sapsucker and suggested he run back to camp to lap up the Keeper's nectar, he fell in line.

Fini knew it was a bad idea and tried to convince them to go home, but her attempt was half-hearted at best because she was also hoping that Halvas would choose to bond with her. She mistook his frequent presence around her as a sign that a pledge was forthcoming, when in reality he was far more interested in her younger sister Siria as soon as she passed her trials and got her vallaslin.

Valend, who was the oldest and the best of them with sword and bow, only agreed to come when Halvas declared he was going even if no one else did, and he came to try to make sure his young clanmate didn't get himself killed. No matter how hard he tried, Halvas could not figure out how to break his guard when they sparred.

"It was a topside smuggler's tunnel, short and narrow and roughly dug out, but it led all the way into an old thaig. When we got to the end of the tunnel, the secret door was still shut, but there were hand holds to slide it open."

Fini had nearly begged at that point for them to turn back and Turion agreed. Halvas ignored them both while he and Galas grabbed the door and pulled it open. They crept inside, finding themselves in the back of a closet filled with musty dwarf clothes, but that led out into a lavish bedchamber. The bed was not made up, the blankets were pulled back as if someone had gotten up and not bothered to fix them.

"We found ourselves in some dwarf house, some noble, judging by all the gold that was laid into everything – the walls, the stone-hewn furniture, the doors. We wandered around for probably an hour, looking at everything, stuffing shiny trinkets in our pockets, going from room to room.

"The place was frozen in time. It looked like everything had been dropped suddenly, left in a hurry. That should have been a sign to me that this wasn't a place to linger, but I was barely nineteen years, young and stupid and convinced I was invincible. That was, until one of my companions opened another door, not realizing that it was the front door of the estate, that opened onto the street. And, outside, on the long-abandoned streets of this forgotten thaig, was a band of darkspawn."

His blood had run cold when he saw Galas stumbled backward, his hands clutching around the black arrow that was protruding from his chest. He didn't even say anything, just turned, shocked as the wet blood bloomed through the front of his shirt and then collapsed on the carpet, a plume of dust rising around him as his body fell heavy and hard against the floor.

Halvas ran for the door, to try to shut it and bar it, but he was too far away and the genlocks got to the entry first. They poured into the house, snarling, trampling over the dead elf in a frenzy at the scent of elves and blood. Before he knew it, he was on his heels, backpedaling as he shot his bow at the twisted, corrupted dwarf-sized darkspawn.

Turion turned and ran, but got turned around and trapped himself in a side room. He tried to fight his way out but the genlocks overwhelmed him. One cut his legs out from under him as another jumped on top and tore his throat out with jagged, rotted teeth.

When the darkspawn got close, Halvas had drawn his sword and tried to fight them off. He remembered the first blow he checked with the blade, how much strength was behind it as he parried the strike aside and cut the monster down, sprayed in black blood.

Valend jumped to his side and for a moment it looked like they might fight them off together. They were pushing the genlocks back together, while Fini feathered the two that had felled Turion. But then Valend took an arrow to his left shoulder, then a genlock axe caught him in the right thigh and he went down to a knee. The next stroke took his head clean off his shoulders. It rolled away, frozen eyes and mouth gazing at Halvas as it rolled onto a cheek facing him.

He turned and ran, then, grabbing Fini by the wrist as they bolted back toward the secret passage with the darkspawn hot on their heels. In his fear, he sprinted past her, leaving her behind even as she called out to him to wait. He hit the narrow doorway in the closet first and wedged in. When he turned back to look, Fini was trying to crawl into the tunnel. She almost made it, before black and gray hands grabbed her and ripped her backward into the darkness.

Her terrified screams reverberated through the dead house as the darkspawn killed her, as Halvas ignored the heavy stone door – too heavy for him to close alone – and sprinted up the tunnel as fast he could. He scraped himself badly as he slipped out the narrow crack back into the hills, then tripped and rolled down the slope, slashing himself on every hardy plant and every stone on the mountainside.

He kept running, looking back often to see if the darkspawn were chasing him. When he saw none and when the sun dipped behind the horizon, covering the mountains in darkness, he finally stopped to catch his breath, coughing and sobbing and vomiting. He scratched his fingers across his bare arms, trying to flake off all of the dried black darkspawn blood that was caked on him.

He slipped into a narrow crevice and stayed away all night with his bow in his hands, his eyes frantically darting around looking for any movement in the darkness.

When the sun finally came up, he gathered his bearings and went as quickly as he could, exhausted and starved, back to the Dalish camp, the only one of five to return.

"I was the only one who survived," Halvas continued his story to Beckett. "But I was sick, from the taint. Fever. Excruciating pain. It felt like my blood was boiling. The Keeper sent out runners to seek out the Grey Wardens, in a desperate hope that they could help me. Two days later, one came and he told me that he might be able to save my life, but that if he did, it belonged to the Wardens after that. He told me that, if I survived, I'd be changed forever. In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice."

Warden Darron was an Ander, old, gray-haired and gray-bearded, a mountain of a man with a severe face but a kindness in his eyes. Halvas was too weak, so Darron placed the cup to his lips for him and tipped it. He kept pouring, even when Halvas started to gag and he felt like his throat was on fire, as the black drink ran in streams out of the corners of his mouth as he choked and coughed it back up. He felt his throat closing as he suffocated, every muscle tensing and screaming in agony, his eyes bulging and feeling like they might pop like overripe berries in his skull, until he could take it no more and fell into darkness.

He awoke the next day, still weak, still in pain, but alive.

The Warden said he would recover, but that his life was now forfeit to the Grey Wardens. The Keeper agreed and thanked him for his services. The next day, after Halvas had eaten, gathered what gear the clan would send with him, and said his farewells, he left the Hunterhorn Mountains in tow of his new master.

"I couldn't understand why I was the only one who made it out of that thaig. All I wanted to do was take the Warden back to that tunnel, to go back and kill every genlock we could find," Halvas said. "I could feel this new strength in my arms and there was so much rage, so much hate burning in my heart, and I was ready to turn it back on the darkspawn. To hurt them, like they hurt me. But Warden Darron wouldn't listen and refused to take me."

He had called the senior Warden shem as well as every other curse and insult he could think of in both the tongues of the elves and men. He accused him of being a coward, a weakling, an old man past his prime. Darron had finally grown tired of his mouth and drew his sword and offered a challenge – land a strike and he would turn back, back to the secret tunnel and the genlocks that had killed his friends.

Halvas flung himself wildly at his joiner, his sword flailing, swinging recklessly with all of his hate, all of his pain. Darron had barely had to move to check the blows. His heavy left fist followed, striking Halvas in the jaw and driving him into the ground. He blinked away stars, spat blood, and scraped back to his feet, howling as he attacked again. Darron's fist connected with his face again, in nearly the same spot. Halvas staggered on his feet and the senior Warden wrenched the sword out of his hand, drove a fist into his stomach, doubling him over, then struck him behind the shoulders with the pommel on his heavy blade.

When Halvas regained consciousness, Darron had set a camp right where he had fallen in the dirt, waiting. As Halvas sat up, tasting blood on his tongue and grimacing at the swollen knot that now made up the right side of his face, the old Warden had handed his sword back to him and offered him food and water, and asked whether he was ready to listen, ready to serve, ready to learn, ready to survive, or if he wanted to go again.

Halvas made the rest of the trip to Weisshaupt in silence.

"Darkspawn don't feel. You can kill dozens, hundreds, thousands even, like I have in my life, and it doesn't make any difference to them. Slaughtering the darkspawn doesn't answer those questions."

There was a moment of quiet, punctuated only by the labored breathing of Beckett and the occasional sniffle as the tears rolled, but slowed, down the sides of his face.

"I'm sorry, Whetstone," Beckett finally said.

"Think no more of it," Halvas said, humbled and calmed by the memory of his own recklessness. He touched the right side of his face, remembering the sting of Warden Darron's mailed gauntlet and feeling the ridges and crevices of the scars he had accumulated there since in his years of battling the darkspawn. This would be the day that Beckett came to truly understand his purpose, and he would emerge a better Warden on the other side of it, as Halvas had in his youth.

"No one was killed, and we should be thankful for that. There are too few of us now to be reckless. Trust in your companions, and trust in yourself. You are here today because you are strong enough to have made it. Believe in that, and draw upon that strength. We will all need it in these harrowing days ahead."

"I will, Whetstone," Beckett said.

Halvas tapped him lightly on the shoulder reassuringly and then stood. "Rest now. Recover your strength."

"Whetstone," Beckett said weakly from the ground, lifting his hand up to stop him before he went. "There's one other thing. Ivon, he was with us, but he broke away from our group and wasn't with us when we were ambushed. I don't know where he went, or if he made it out."

"I'll look for him," Halvas promised with a nod, then walked away.

He knew exactly where his friend and companion had gone.