Chapter Text
There were two things Elaine learned about Qunari before the next sunset. First, for a people native to the far northern lands, they were remarkably uncaring of the cold, even frigid streams fed almost entirely by meltwater. Secondly, they didn't seem to have a nudity taboo.
There had been a third thing, but Elaine had firmly locked it away in a quarantined corner of her mind until and unless she saw Anders again. He'd appreciate it. Possibly in excessive and lurid detail, but one had to make sacrifices for friends who so relentlessly offered to facilitate escape attempts. Until then, she had to be able to look her fellow recruit in the face without imagining what Anders would say, so. Two things. She'd only learned two things that afternoon.
The important part of that incident was that Warden-Recruit Sten was no longer covered in dried blood, and neither were his clothes.
He was wearing a set of Warden Duncan's trousers, now, while he sat back and watched the Grey Warden try to teach Elaine how to start a fire with nothing but the driest pieces of conveniently-shaped wood they'd found before making camp. She felt like a child again, attempting to glare wood into submission until it burst into flames by her will alone, but she wasn't seven anymore. She could be patient and controlled and learn a new skill that would stand her in good stead in the future.
By now her will alone would have had this fire burning merrily in seconds, and Sten's clean clothes dried not long after, but she didn't trust him. She had never found anything on how the Qunari treated their own mages, in the books available to her in the Tower library, but they were at daggers drawn with the Tevinter Imperium. She would sleep where Sten could kill her and wake up unharmed at least once before she trusted his unknown temper with the truth of her abilities.
She was pretty sure she had the fire drill technique down correctly. The problem, as it so often was in late Guardian and early Drakonis, was the utter lack of dry wood. That, and if Elaine got any more frustrated, something might burst into flames without it being plausibly caused by the heat of wood rubbing together.
Her eyes stung. She missed Anders. She hoped he was staying out of trouble, or at least restraining his trouble to the things he did in shadowy corners with people who'd never deign to sit near him at the dinner table.
Not that Elaine was bitter. He did get entire loaves of bread to himself half the time.
"I give up," she said finally. "The sodden Ferelden countryside has defeated me."
She settled back on her heels, glowering at the unlit fire while Duncan, mercifully, retrieved his flint and steel. It was quick work to strike sparks with that, and she didn't even feel the need to cheat to get the flames to catch on the firewood.
Once the campfire was lit, damp clothes hung to dry near it and their cookpot set over it, and there was nothing to do but wait, Elaine sat herself down near Sten. She had questions. She had mountains of them. Some of them burned like acid in her throat. She didn't ask that one. "So," she said, "what's a Qunari doing so far south?"
He blinked at her. It was remarkably catlike, languid, more dismissive than surprised. "Answering a question."
Elaine bit down a laugh. "Mine, or someone else's?"
Was that a twitch at the corner of his mouth, or the fire causing strange shadows as the sun slipped lower in the sky? "The Arishok asked, 'What is the Blight?'. By his curiosity, I am now here."
"Well, you're with the right people to answer that question."
"Perhaps."
She blinked slowly right back at him. His eyes were unnervingly amber. "Not very talkative, huh."
Sten's answering dryness would have been useful against the firewood. "Your grasp of the obvious is remarkable."
She let it drop, for the moment.
Over their soup of foraged plants fortified with a conservative fraction of what the Hawkes had sent with Elaine, she asked, "Who is the Arishok? Is he the leader of the Beresaad?"
Sten let the question hang in the air for a moment before lowering his bowl. "He commands the Antaam, the body of the Qunari."
"Then what is the Beresaad?" Elaine pressed.
"The vanguard."
He lifted his soup to sip the broth, and didn't lower it again. Elaine took the hint.
"For what purpose have you recruited her?"
Elaine didn't stop walking to look at Sten. She glanced over her shoulder, but she didn't slow. The falter in her step could have been blamed on the deterioration of the Imperial Highway, if the dirt of the road hadn't dried out in the sun, or if there had been any stones nearby for her to trip on.
"Warden-Recruit Elaine seeks to join the Grey Wardens in our battle against the darkspawn," Duncan replied evenly, "just as you do."
"Your distributors of provisions bear the same title as your warriors? How confusing."
Elaine took a deep breath and blew it out before turning on her heel to scowl at Sten. "I was not recruited as a cook, Sten. When we get to Ostagar, darkspawn will be dying at my hands as much as to any other Grey Warden's." She planted herself firmly in the road and gestured at Duncan. "Duncan's been doing half the foraging! Don't tell me the Qunari only teach their military to decapitate people, and nothing of how to provision themselves."
"I don't understand," Sten said, an actual note of frustration briefly in his voice. "You look like a woman."
"Your grasp of the obvious is remarkable," Elaine sniped back.
Duncan sighed and stepped forward, not quite placing himself bodily between them but certainly suggesting it. "The Grey Wardens recruit from all walks of life. Those who are suited to the life are too few for the search for potential Wardens to be limited to men, or for that matter to humans."
Sten grunted, not looking convinced.
But he didn't say anything else, either, so Elaine would take her victories where she could.
Sten found Elaine confusing. The feeling was mutual, and she defaulted to the behavior that had kept her safe around large, dangerous men who had the power to kill her and might feel provoked by something she couldn't predict: she stayed quiet, did what was expected of her, and didn't needle him.
Or at least, she meant to.
It seemed the only thing keeping her contained for the last decade and change was the absolute certainty that stepping out of line meant death. With Warden Duncan nearby and almost definitely zero templars lurking in the bushes, she barely lasted a day.
The wood had been too stubbornly wet that evening, and so the three of them huddled behind a windbreak of canvas against the winter that clung to the southernmost extent of Ferelden. "What's so confusing about a female warrior?" Elaine asked in between nibbles of trail mix.
Sten had a really remarkably unreadable face, but this topic clearly baffled him enough to bring some heat to his voice. "Women are artisans, merchants, farmers, or priests. They don't fight."
"Maybe Qunari women don't," Elaine said, deliberately mild. "But things work differently in the south."
"It is not done," Sten insisted. "There is no more to it."
The Circle hadn't protected Elaine from most things, but when one's physical size had little to do with how deadly one could be, women were less looked down upon. Not none, of course; the cruelest templars chose the physically weakest targets, those who were less likely to fight back, and those were more often women. But less. So Sten's objections were almost refreshing in their novelty.
"Why isn't it done?" she asked finally.
"Why would women ever wish to be men?"
A stupid question, really. Why wouldn't they? Some days Elaine wanted to tear her womb from her guts and burn the traitorous thing to ashes, to be safe from ever risking the worst torment a templar could have inflicted upon her. But. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Either you are a woman, or you are a fighter. Only one of those can be true."
"When we reach Ostagar," Duncan interrupted, "I will introduce you to my fellow Grey Wardens in Ferelden. We are few, but there are women among our number."
Sten grunted. "We shall see."
Even as a ruin, Ostagar's scale was imposing. The stone skeleton of the ancient fortress swarmed with troops and camp followers, and the valley below could almost have been a teeming sea. The