The next 'morning,' or whatever it was called when everyone was awake at the same time and wordlessly decided to strike camp and move on, Oghren was missing.
"So… how long has he been gone?" Alistair asked, remarking on the empty bedroll.
"You mean he's not there?" Morrigan asked. She walked around the boulder behind which he'd lain his things and saw the bedroll empty, "Oh."
"You took your watch, and he wasn't there? You didn't wonder?" Ten asked.
"Well, no, with the amount he'd drank, I assumed he'd come back and fallen asleep without waking us," Morrigan said, "I wasn't about the check on the man. He seems like the type to collapse with his drawers half off."
"That's… actually fair," Ten said.
"I did not seek him out either," Sten said, "I bear some of the blame for this."
"So… odds he's still alive?" Ten asked.
"Being absolutely wrecked does not interfere with his ability to fight," Alistair said, after considering the question for a moment, "So he probably hasn't been killed, but it also increases the likelihood he walked right into a bottomless pit."
"So sixty-forty," Ten concluded, "Say, did the two of you hear the creepy whistling?"
"The what?" asked Morrigan.
"Guess that's a no," Ten said, "Come on, if he's hurt, you're more useful than I am. I promise I'll warn you if he's passed out with his ass out."
Being sure to take her dagger this time - it had mysteriously reappeared with the rest of her things at some point during the night - she ventured back out to the mouth of the tunnel. The whistling was gone, and she didn't hear any footsteps, but the noise of stone on stone came from the horseshoe tunnel. Pigeon chose this moment to appear from the darkness, which made her jump, but both women knelt to greet the hound properly.
"Ugh!" the witch groaned, "She reeks."
"She always reeks," Ten said.
"No, this is a…. I think he spilled whiskey on her."
"Seriously?" Ten put her nose right against the top of Pigeon's head. "Ew! All right, girl. Tell us where the culprit is, and we'll avenge your honor."
Pigeon gave a small bark and took off down the tunnel opposite them. The rock-on-rock sound seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, but smell was more reliable than sound, and the hound led them off into a side cavern that they had missed when they had walked the tunnel the previous day. Unlike the one where they had made camp, this one showed evidence of recent habitation. There were even little glowing crystals like the kind that lit Orzammar placed carefully around the room, a well-crafted firepit, and even what passed for an actual bed. Anywhere else, it might have been cozy.
They found Oghren on the far end of this cavern, stacking stones over a…
"Oghren, are you hiding a body?" Ten asked.
"Proper burial," Oghren grunted. His face was red with strain as he lifted a boulder half his size and placed it atop the cairn he had apparently been building all night. "Poor kid deserved as much."
"Kid, what kid?" asked Morrigan.
"Ghoul. Been here for years as far as I can tell," Oghren said. He cast about for another ston. Finding one, he lifted it and brought it over, "Not sure how he got the taint, but he got it all right. Was falling apart and barely had any wits left to him. That's no kind of life."
"You killed him." It was a statement of fact, not an accusation.
"It's the only way. Hell of a thing."
"Someone you knew?" Ten asked. She walked the perimeter of the cairn. There was a board at one end, looking like the repurposed lid of a chest that had been torn right off its hinges. On it was carved a name - Ruck Gardhang - and a date nearly five years before.
"Knew of him. He went missing from an expedition. A long time ago now. I used to drink with one of his uncles," Oghren said, "Kid's mam raised a hell of a stink. Has been for years. Shit, I'll probably have to be the one to tell her." He wiped his brow and then his eyes, "Hell of a thing. And… ah… between us here, we found the cairn. Already built. All right?"
Morrigan narrowed her eyes at the dwarf.
"We found it," Oghren said again, "He'd been dead for five years, all right?"
"Five years. Got it," Ten sighed.
"I don't understand," Morrigan said.
"It's to spare his family thinking about him wasting away down here while they weren't allowed to look for him," Ten said.
"I still don't understand."
"You don't have to. You just have to play along. Not sure who you'd tell, anyway."
"From the stone we came, to the stone we return," Oghren sighed, "Would you two give me a minute? I'll be along. We're in for a real shitstorm today. We'll hit the Dead Trenches within a couple of hours if my study of the maps has been correct. Best gird your loins."
"Dead Trenches," said Ten, eying him warily, "Sounds cheery. We'll pack up your things."
She took off towards camp, Morrigan at her heels, and tried to get as far away as possible as w quickly as possible. The acoustics, however, did not prevent them from hearing soft sniffling as they made their way back.
Five years. Five years alone in the dark, losing his mind. Too far gone to end it. That is not how I will go. I am not coming back here. Calling be damned. A quiet walk off a cliff, one day in summer, when the sun's warm but not too warm. Or embrium, that'll do it. Wearing a nice dress, with my face done up. Somewhere where my dad won't be the one to find me. If he's still around. He probably will be. That man survives on pure stubbornness at this point, I swear…
"He's alive," Morrigan announced when they returned, "Needs a minute."
"He found the grave of a friend of his," Ten said.
"Right," Alistair said, clearly unconvinced, but went about doing his share of the packing up anyway, stomping out the glowing ends of spider carapace, "I don't suppose there's much down here to go up."
"But if it did, who knows how many would suffocate," Sten concluded.
"Do darkspawn need oxygen?" asked Ten, "Genuine question. Every time I've been close to them, I'm too fight-or-flight to register if they're breathing."
"If that would work, the Wardens generations ago would have doused the Deep Roads in oil and liquor, set them off, then sealed the entrances," Alistair said.
"Well, they didn't even think of working up to a full dose of the blood to get more idiots through the Joining, so I don't know if I trust their wisdom on the matter," Ten replied.
"Not all problems may be solved by lighting things on fire," Sten admonished her.
"But some certainly can," Morrigan said, "Like giant spiders."
"Giant spiders are very useful," Ten concurred, holding up a clear flask of venom she had gotten from their victims, ignoring the groans of disgust from her companions as she pried the sacs out with a hunting knife and collected their contents, "Do you know how hard it is getting venom out of a regular sized one? You can milk a snake, but it's basically impossible to do it to spiders, though I've heard mages found a way. But who wants to keep enough regular-sized spiders to make it worth it? You'd think it would be great, but they tend to throw off whole ecosystems…"
"Look, we are all…. Thankful for your skills. Most of the time," Alistair said, "But maybe keeping some of it a mystery would be good."
"You people don't appreciate art," Ten sighed. She adjusted the straps on her pack and led them back out of their tunnel and onto the main road.
"I don't think that show would do well in Crestwood."
"Crestwood is all sheepherders and cousin-fuckers, I'm not trying to appeal to them."
They found Oghren, red-eyed and grim-faced, waiting for them on the road. He silently took his things from Sten, and led them off to where the road started going downhill. They passed under the tunnel, which only looked small compared to the rest of the cavern, and just kept walking. The scenery didn't really change - there were the occasional statues of some ancestor or other marking side passages and mile markers written in a script Ten had never seen before. Still, even these began bleeding into each other. Oghren seemed to know what he was doing, though. He's probably been studying maps for months. Trying to figure out what could have gone wrong. Where it could have gone wrong.
It became clear what could have gone wrong, and where, several hours into their journey when the road dead-ended at a pile of rubble several stories high that looked like it was dwarfmade, probably to seal off whatever was on the other side of the road. Some enterprising fool, however, had cleared out a section near one end so that an average-sized dwarf on the nimble side could climb through with no issue. Oghren said nothing and just began climbing the pile of rubble, followed by the dog. Ten made it through with no problem, but the other three had to stoop or crawl, something Sten found undignified. He was about to open his mouth to complain when he saw what was on the other side. What the others were staring, openmouthed at, and he joined them.
The road stretched on, narrowing from the vast expanse behind them to a bridge over a deep chasm. Ten was the first to walk forward, every nerve on fire with the sheer number of them. There they were, below, scurrying about like ants. So many of them that they did not even notice the two Grey Wardens all those stories above. She leaned over the railing, not even considering how old it might be, in what state or repair, or that she was several inches taller than the people it was designed for. And so she was taken off-guard when two burly hands seized her around the upper thighs and began carrying her back.
"Nope, not today, Warden. This is not a good place to lose your shit."
She found herself dumped unceremoniously back on the near side of the bridge, where she dusted herself off and looked to see who had grabbed her so unceremoniously. She had definitely been guilty of having trouble telling dwarven men apart - especially since so many of them favored full beards that hid any distinguishing features - and so she was a bit grateful that this one had some distinctive tattoos on his forehead and around both eyes. Well, she thought they were distinctive until she saw the small host behind him, twenty or so other dwarves, more men than women but not by much, with the exact same ink.
"I wasn't losing my shit," she protested.
"It's not your fault," her savior said. It happens all the time. Some of you are just more sensitive to it than others."
"Fair enough. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"
"Kardol," he said, "No surname. We lose those when we join the Legion." He looked her over briefly. "Hm. If surface wardens are down here, that must mean the cyclone's about to hit the shithouse topside."
"That's one way to put it," said Ten, "How do you know what a cyclone is?"
"Spent a few years up there," Kardol said, "So what are you, criminal or true believer?"
"Criminal," she said, "The true believer's over there." She jerked her head at Alistair, who was standing a more respectful distance from the edge.
"Fair enough, so you must be in charge," Kardol said.
"What makes you think that?"
"Criminals are smarter. The rest of them aren't wardens, though, are they. I don't smell it on them."
"No," said Ten, "Just… ordinary idiots with nothing better to do. So what are you down here for?"
"What do you think?"
She looked him over. Any telltale signs that might have told her his previous trade would have been subsumed into however many years he'd spent down here. "Something organized," she said, "Were you with the Carta?"
"Well, the charge was racketeering, but the whole… fleeing to the surface to evade justice thing got me sent down here," Kardol said, "And the three bounty hunters I took down. What about you?"
"Murder. Five regular, three important."
"Not bad," Kardol said, nodding approvingly, "So you're not falling apart, and neither is he, so you're not on your way out, not yet at least. If you're down here thinking you're going to stem the tide by damming the source, I assure you you're not."
"We are in search of the Paragon Branka," Oghren declared.
"Well, good luck with that," Kardol scoffed, "I can imagine why you are; how'd you rope these two into it?"
"There's a problem with succession," Ten said, "And for some reason, everyone seems to believe that Branka is the one to solve it. I don't ask too many questions. This is not my territory."
"And what does that have to do with you?"
"We need dwarven troops for the surface."
"Of course you do," Kardol sighed, "When's the last time any of you came down here to help us out?"
"Last time we were invited. If you hadn't noticed, Orzammar's been sealed up tighter than a…" She glanced around, and remembered Lelianna was off taking that strange little dwarf woman to the Circle of Magi, "Nun's asshole for years."
"Still?"
"How long have you been down here?"
"No idea, but my beard's still not gone gray, so I'm going to call it less than five."
"And you're in charge?"
"What do you think the average lifespan is down here?" asked Kardol, "It's not called the Legion of Longevity, after all."
"Right," Ten sighed.
"What we need is across that canyon," Oghren said, cutting in again.
"We can't stop you. That's not our job," Kardol replied, rolling his eyes, "But it's going to be a fruitless search. Nobody knows what goes on beyond there, but nobody has ever returned from it."
"Cap!" called one of the Legion, "They're coming again."
"Well, if you'll excuse me…" Kardol grunted, drawing a nasty-looking blade from its scabbard.
Ten sighed and did the same but stood off to the side, not wanting to insult the Legion by assuming they needed her help.
"Hey! Tell your friend to get his ass on the ground, or he's getting a bolt in the back of the head!" an older woman's voice cried from the back of the formation. Ten looked and saw that in the split second she had taken her eyes off the darkspawn on the bridge, Sten had taken it upon himself to rush them, battleaxe drawn.
"Sten! Hit the deck!" Ten called. The qunari turned and saw that the two dozen dwarven warriors had fanned out into three ranks and had drawn crossbows. His red eyes widened, and he dropped to the ground.
"Idiot," Kardol muttered. "Loose!"
The front line of arbalists loosed their quarrels. A few of the darkspawn fell. Sten started belly-crawling back towards the near side of the bridge. Ten held her breath as the first line knelt to reload and the second rose.
"Loose!"
The second line squeezed their triggers. Black blood splattered the bridge as the remainder fell. The third line of dwarves grumbled and began unloading their weapons.
"How often does that happen?" Alistair asked.
"Every few hours," Kardol replied, "You'd think they'd have learned by now."
"Why don't you just demolish the bridge?" Ten asked, "If that's where they amass…"
"You think we haven't been lobbying for that for years?" Kardol asked, eyebrows raised, "I think the powers that be have this ridiculous idea that one day we are going to retake the territory between Orzammar and Kal'Hirol, and this bridge is necessary for that."
"And how long has that been the plan?"
"Who knows," Kardol said, "Look, this is our post. I can't in good conscience send anyone with you."
"Wasn't asking you to. But I did have one question. Is there a list, or registry of everyone who shows up down here?" asked Ten.
"That's up top, in the Shaperate," Kardol said.
"No, that's the people who get sent. I want a list of the people who show up."
Kardol stared at her for a moment, realizing what she was getting at. "Sigrunn!" he called finally.
From the back of the formation, a woman in her sixties approached. She was in rough shape, but mainly from the ravages of age and hard living rather than exposure to anything toxic. "What you want, Cap?" she asked.
"Sigrunn's been here thirty years," Kardol says, "Claims she remembers everyone who's been through."
"Thirty years, huh," Ten remarked, "How'd you manage that?
"I'm slippery," Sigrunn said, grinning to reveal several missing teeth."
"So look, I just need to know if you remember someone named Hanyeshka who came here about ten years ago. Would have been young, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Noble birth."
"Noble birth!" Sigrunn exclaimed, "We do get those from time to time. They don't last long. Arkad was the last one. He kept insisting we call him Lord Ranska. He lasted about a month, and that was about three years ago. Wait, what was the name you said? Graznica? There was definitely a Graznica… but that was maybe seven years ago…"
"Hanyeshka," Ten repeated.
Sigrunn shook her head, "No Hanyeshka down here. Not in my thirty years."
"Well shit," Alistair remarked, "So Harrowmont's dirty as well."
"What do I keep telling you?" Ten chuckled, "They're all terrible. All of them."
"What's beyond the bridge?" Alistair asked, turning his attention back to Kardol.
"What was the thaig of Bownammar," Kardol said, "Beyond that, Caridin's Cross. Both overrun. Haunted, too. We've heard singing in the distance on quiet days."
"I don't give a nug's hole," Oghren, who was getting antsy, declared.
"Well, we've come this far," Ten sighed, "How long until they amass at the bridge again?"
"Couple of hours. If they do, we'll assume the worst," Kardol said, "We're not going in there after you when you don't return, but I've learned better than to argue with the harebrained. You two, though." He called to Sten, who had made it all the way back, and Morrigan, who had been quietly observing the whole thing, "This one's a moron" - Oghren - "and these two are already dead" - Alistair and Ten - "Are you sure you want to follow them?"
"No," Morrigan snorted, "But… I'm going to anyway."
"There is much to learn here," Sten stated.
"Come on, let's go before the shooting starts again," Ten said, and took off across the bridge.