“Fine.” Chencel sighed, putting her glove back on. “I’ll try it on, but try not to make me gag from the stench.”
The old woman smiled, then moved behind Chencel, unraveling the scarf as she went. She started humming a little song to herself as she went about her business.
“Do you need me to kneel down a bit?” Chencel asked, slightly mockingly. She reached out to her firmly planted spear and steadied herself as she lowered herself to match Old Nan’s height. The older woman gave no response, but Chencel could feel her hands taking hold of her hair and pulling it into a bun atop her head. The scarf was quite soft, and she almost didn’t even feel how it was holding her tresses up. “What is that song you’re humming? It’s familiar, but I can’t quite place—”
Chencel felt the strong fabric tighten around her throat, cutting off the rest of her sentence. A sharp kick to the back of her leg drove her to her knees and she lost her grip on her spear. She scrabbled with her fingers to find purchase on the fabric and pull it away from her neck, but it was so soft and slick that she could find nothing to grip.
“I learned it from a good friend, long ago. According to him, it’s a Dalish tune that used to be sung by children in a camp not far from here.” The kind tone of the old woman’s voice was still present, but now it was carefully tempered and measured, the tone one would use to chastise a small child who would not be quiet. “The children would sing this song as they collected water and played in the stream. Do you remember now?”
Chencel remembered. On their way to set up camp here, the centuri had encountered some Dalish children from an aravel. Her centurion, Magister Bicklius, ordered the whole group wiped out so that the centuri would have no competition for resources in the area. Chencel had to catch the child who started to run, so that he would not warn the rest.
“His mother called him Sil. He was twelve. You held him under the water.” Chencel still struggled, but the older woman’s grip was too strong. “Did he fight back? While his breath left him, and you held his shoulders to keep him still, did he thrash? Kick? Try to scratch or bite?”
The soldier’s arms started to go limp.
“Did you know that the Oranavra clan also sold their goods? They even made enough to purchase a contract from the Antivan Crows.” Chencel was almost beyond the point of hearing, but the older woman obviously knew what she was doing. “Lessef of the Antivan Crows has fulfilled the contract.”
Chencel felt her limp body being pulled upright, then some small tugs as she was tied to her own spear. Lessef released the scarf so that the weight of the soldier’s own body against the spear continued to choke her. As her sight dimmed, the last thing she saw was the sun completely set beyond the Nocen Sea, turning the whitecaps into a series of sparkling, brilliant red and orange flashes.
Moments later, anyone looking at this area from the camp would see a lone perimeter guard, leaning on her spear, gazing solemnly across the water.
* * *
“Salentin, are you taking a break?” Penteri inquired, casting an accusing eye toward his subordinate. The sun was setting, and Penteri and this new recruit still had more than a few tents to set up before the remainder of the camp arrived in the morning.
“Please, sir, may I light a fire?” The young soldier turned to face his superior, rubbing his hands. “I promise I’ll keep going, but I don’t know if my hands are numb from cold or if my arms are just giving up on me. Also, the ropes are so cold that it’s getting hard to work with them, sir.” Salentin’s voice had a pleading quality to it that sickened Penteri. He was the laziest soldier he had ever worked with and this seemed like just another chance to complain.
“You have five minutes,” Penteri snarled, “but I have no issues with making you work through the night. I don’t care if you can’t feel your arms of if they fall right off—we don’t stop until our task is complete, soldier.”
“Yes, sir.” Salentin’s face brightened as he moved to pile logs for a fire. Penteri noted that he was moving a bit faster now that he was doing something he wanted to do.
Penteri looked around at their handiwork. He wouldn’t admit it, but that fire was starting to sound like a good idea. Any extra light would be helpful at this point. Because they were setting up the canvas tents and moving farther from the center of camp, the torches hadn’t been placed here yet. It would be dangerous to use torches out here with all these flammable structures and no one to watch over them.
Looking at Salentin’s back, he imagined how good it would feel to have actual peers around again. This pathetic soldier was little more than a scrap of a man, barely old enough to shave. His close-cropped blond hair and round face combined with his near-constant whining to make him seem even more of a child. Penteri couldn’t help but feel cheated. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow, when the rest of the centuri would start to file in and raucous laughter and voices would make it difficult to feel alone. His fondest memories were when he would sit around the camp at night with his friends trading tales, drinking, and treating themselves to their day’s rations. Sometimes the older soldiers would make the rounds and talk about the good old days, fighting off darkspawn and forcing them back into their holes, scouring the countryside for knife-ears and keeping their lands safe for the Imperium, or even finding the occasional apostate group to quash.
It was well and truly dark now, and Salentin’s fire was essentially the only light visible. The skies had clouded over once the sun left, and a dense fog from the Nocen Sea was making it feel as dark as it looked. The flames dancing in front of the young soldier cast flickering and jumping shadows all over the clearing, making it look like each tent had someone inside it performing some kind of frenzied dance in the firelight.
“Sir,” Salentin’s plaintive voice started, “I’m sorry, but I think I’m injured.” He turned to look at Penteri and held out his finger where it appeared a piece of wood had lodged itself into the flesh of his fingertip. Something in the way that Salentin looked at him finally caused the dam to burst.
“A … splinter?!” Penteri exploded. “A splinter! When the Antaam attack, do you think that you can just whine at them to stop carving through your skin? Will you be able to cover the soldier next to you with your mewling complaints instead of holding up your shield?” He drew the sword at his hip and lunged menacingly at Salentin’s face, forcing him to fall on his backside and look even more like a child. “This causes more damage than a small chunk of wood in your finger!”
He had to turn away from Salentin, his shoulders shaking, and resheathed his weapon. If he kept looking in the direction of the boy, it was likely that he would do something he might regret. He took a few deep breaths, slowly inhaling and exhaling. The only sounds were Penteri’s heavy breathing, and the occasional crackle of the logs in the fire.
“Sir, I’m sorry, I’ll get back to work. You’re right, this is nothing, it’s small. I’m sorry sir, I’ll—”
“Stop.” Without turning around, Penteri relaxed his hand on his weapon. “Recruit Salentin,” he began, “I am going to speak very slowly and clearly so that there is no chance you will misunderstand me. Ever since I was saddled with the task of training you, I keep coming back to the same problem.” He took another deep breath. He could hear Salentin behind him, shifting on the ground. Likely sitting down again like the lazy child he is, Penteri thought.
“You’re not a soldier. You wear the uniform and you know the drills, but you’re not a soldier. I am embarrassed by you, that you might be seen as someone that young children should aspire to be. You are a disgrace, and this is your last night of service. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to Magister Bicklius and recommend that he strip you of your rank; then I’m going to personally delight in stripping you of everything you owe to the Imperium and driving you from this defensive front. Maybe you can find some farmer out there to take pity on you and your splinter. I will lose absolutely no sleep in making this decision. It’s weak and cowardly people like you that get good soldier
s killed. I’m thankful only that I am removing you from my centuri before combat.”
He turned to look back at Salentin. The youth had turned back to face the fire. He was now fully seated, legs in front of him, his arms sitting on his lap, and his head hanging low.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Penteri waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.
“Salentin,” he growled, pounding his feet into the earth as he closed the distance between them, “I am still your superior until the sun rises again, and you will respond to me as such! I said, do I make myself clear?”
As he spat out the last word, he reached down to grip Salentin by the shoulder and yanked, whipping him about so that they would be face-to-face. Salentin’s body flailed at the force of Penteri’s action, his arms making a sickening thwack as each limb struck the ground. A long, thin red line wrapped almost all the way around Salentin’s neck, and blood had spilled down the front of his chest. His head lolled to the side and then back so that he was staring up at his commander. The flames continued to dance, light glinting off his eyes, providing stark contrast to the inner light that was there just a few minutes ago.
“Lessef of the Antivan Crows has fulfilled the contract.”
The woman’s voice cut through the silence and brought Penteri back to his senses. He immediately drew his weapon and looked around for where it had come from.
“A Crow? Here?” He whirled on his heels, feeling every muscle in his body ache. It had been a long day of hauling poles and heavy fabrics, then assembling them, and in the chill night air he was feeling every bit of it. The adrenaline of seeing Salentin’s corpse was already beginning to fade, letting numbness settle in.
“Oranavra,” the voice came again from the darkness. He turned, still unable to place its origin. “Do you remember?”
He kept silent, and frantically wiped the cold sweat from his brow. Maybe if he kept quiet, he might hear her and place her location before she had a chance to strike. But the firelight cast his own shadows all around him, and the folds of the tents and the blank spaces between them created any number of dark crevices where she could hide.
“Do you remember, Legate Penteri? The Dalish couple. Clan Oranavra. Do you remember?”
“You and your subordinate here walked into their home and and pulled him out of their panicked embrace. When he started to protest, you cut him down, cleaving him from shoulder to heart. Do you remember?”
Penteri’s hands felt damp with sweat inside his gloves despite the chill of the night. The hilt of his sword rested uneasily in his moist grip. He started to slowly spin around, searching the blank spaces. Any one of them could hold a Crow dagger. There was no way for him to know where the attack would come from. His breathing got heavier and tremors in his arms caused his blade to shake.
Suddenly, a pain shot through his left leg. It exploded upward from the back of his ankle through his kneecap. He couldn’t stop himself from crying out, or from dropping his weapon and collapsing to the ground, his good leg bent at the knee while his hands felt for the wound. An almost needle-thin blade had pierced through the back of his ankle, narrowly missing the bone and passing all the way through his leg.
“Do you remember?” The voice was higher, almost sounding pleased, and the unmistakable sound of a giggle hung in the air.
“Yes, yes, I remember!” he almost screamed. “Then she started to run and I had Salentin shoot her. He missed, and the arrow struck her leg. Magister Bicklius ordered me to go after her. He ordered me!”
“You chased her through the woods, taunting her. You knew she wouldn’t be able to get away. Did he order you to do that?”
The small fire was already starting to burn down into embers. Penteri looked up across the fire to see an old, squat woman in rags enter the clearing. Her smile was wide, another needle-sharp knife effortlessly being flipped end over end in one hand, and a pack held loosely by a worn strap in the other. Her eyes were shining, sparkling in the firelight, and her face was wrinkled like that of someone who rarely stopped smiling and spent a large part of their many years laughing.
“Please,” he begged, “please. I just followed orders. You want Magister Bicklius! You can just let me go!”
She continued smiling, slowly walking toward Penteri, keeping the dying embers between them. “I might. Let’s see.” With that, she dropped her pack directly onto the fire. Penteri had time to see the canvas split, and a large amount of liquid burst forth, before the flames were quenched. His eyes were useless as the area was plunged into inky black.
Penteri had to get away. He had already lost track of where his weapon fell. And he wouldn’t be able to run. Not with his injury. He scraped his palms and knees trying to crawl as quickly as possible. He turned toward what he hoped was the center of the camp. Maybe he could find help there? He attempted to stand, but his left leg was less than useless. Unable to control himself, his body let the sound of a pained intake of air escape, and he tumbled. He landed face-first against rough canvas and knew he had made it out of the clearing. He struggled to regain his balance, but he kept falling. He was getting tangled. Ropes, canvas, and poles wound around his limbs, trapping him in an embrace he couldn’t escape. He kept turning around and around, hoping that he might find some way out.
Tears started to stream down his face as he finally came to rest, looking up to the clouded sky. His eyes were beginning to adapt, and he could see that he had not moved far from where he started. Some embers of the firepit had regained their glow, and he could see the lumpy outline of Salentin sprawled along the ground.
“Lessef of the Antivan Crows has fulfilled the contract.”
He turned his head to the side to see Lessef standing just next to him, his own sword held high above her head in both hands, pointed straight down. Before he could think about anything else it fell, rapidly plunging into his chest and pinning him to the ground. He couldn’t contain an abrupt cough, and blood burbled from his lips as the last of the air left his lungs. He tried to reach for the blade, but his arms were still trapped beneath the heavy canvas and tent debris. He could only stare as the old woman, still smiling, slowly backed away from him and blended back into the darkness.
Anyone coming upon the scene in the morning light would find a young soldier by the fire, a new recruit who had died at his post. Meanwhile, his superior officer appeared to have fallen and trapped himself while attempting to flee, impaled on his own weapon.
* * *
It was the silence that woke him first.
For seventeen years, Magister Bicklius felt more at home in a bustling, rough military camp than he did in the stylish, worn streets of his home in Ventus. The sound of a soldier rasping his blade against a whetstone muffled by his tent walls made for a much better lullaby than the sound of boot heels on cobbled stones outside his window. Even the soft clinking of his guards as they made their rounds in chainmail caused him to smile as he drifted off.
But now, there was nothing. Even with the bulk of his forces arriving in the morning, the camp should still be alive with the sound of his men and women outside going about their nightly tasks.
He lay still, fully awake, and slowed his breathing so that he could focus. He opened one eye slightly. Still dark. Minimal moonlight. Dawn was still fairly far off. Still definitely too quiet.
Across his bare face he felt a small, almost intangible whiff of a breeze. Someone had just entered his space.
Instantly he was up, using a Fade step to move out of his bed at the far end of the room and into a wooden chair just to the right of the tent’s entrance. Simultaneously, he flipped a miniscule fireball up to the ceiling of his tent, catching the wick of his lamp.
He turned in his chair to face toward the door to see who would have the gall to intrude upon his space, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, peering at this new presence. “And who shall I say is calling?” His voice rumbled low in his chest, and he smiled a thin-lipped grin.
Bicklius knew that he cut an imposing figure. While he was not much taller than five feet, he made a point of making sure that he would not be overlooked. He had no control over his height, but he had complete control over what he could do with his physique. Unlike his peers who looked only to their magic, he spent most of his life honing both his mind and body. Magic, he knew, meant relying on the Fade and the creatures within it. But physical strength was inherent.
In this light and in this pose, Bicklius could almost be mistaken for a small boulder come to life. He took great care to make sure that he was always freshly shaved so that he would not be bothered with wasting time on petty preening. His dark brown eyes shone from beneath the shadow of his looming brow, set above chiseled cheekbones. His restained grin hid his teeth, lips curling at the edges of his small mouth, framed by his immense square jaw. He consciously flexed and relaxed, knowing that it made his corded muscles pulse in the lamplight. Years of physical exertion had honed his body into a machine of precision. His chair was designed so that his looming forward like this would emphasize his imposing physique, broad and powerful. He planted his legs firmly on the floor, rough-hewn obelisks supporting this small giant. Bare from the waist up, his massive frame was covered only by a small pair of loose shorts. He couldn’t wait to see the look on this intruder’s face.
Like him, she was also small in stature, but similarity ended there. While he looked ready for a hurricane, she would surely blow over in a stiff breeze. She was barefoot, her mottled skin visible and liver-spotted at her ankles. She was unkempt, wild-eyed, and wearing what appeared to be brightly colored rags. He had to give her credit, though. She was crouching, unflinching, in front of him, less than ten feet away. And there was something about the way she held that dagger in her hand …
“Ah,” he said, leaning back in his chair, reaching for a bottle from his dining table, realization dawning. “Crow, yes?” The wizened woman’s face twitched for a moment. He had caught her. “Should I assume that if I were to call, my guards would not be able to come?” He uncorked the bottle and poured a small amount of wine into two small crystal glasses.
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 37
