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His nimble, practiced fingers worked at the buckle that held the bag together and though he heard the echo of steps on the stone outside, if he was quick- the documents would be out of the it and into his own pack and he would be out the window before anyone came through the door.
If
he was quick.
While he worked, his eyes swept the room, a nervous habit picked up from missing the movement of one too many shadows. In the corner, he spied a symbol he recognized on a bundle of fabric. Next to it, a sword leaned against the wall and he recognized that too.
"Shit," he hissed, nearly dropping the satchel. He fumbled with it and a moment later he had deemed the effort to get inside the bag futile and was slinging the whole thing over his shoulder. He made quick steps back across the room and towards the open window.
The footsteps sounded closer and when he stopped to listen, there were voices too. Though both still seemed distant enough. He slipped into shadow and crept the rest of the way to the window. It was easy enough to slide back over the ledge, find the edge of the window below with his toes and start his decent.
He almost had the window closed when he heard a voice in the room- a woman's and then the loud click of the door closing. He left the window open, let his hands slide from the edge using the give under his boots to feel his way down the wall and then down again, landing on the battlements.
A quick jog and he was hidden, crouched below the crenellation and sighing with relief. He peeked over the top of the stones in time to see a flare of light in the room. A shadowed woman’s form stood in the window and it was wrong to think she could see him, but his mind pictured the image of her face, lips pulled wide into a frown.
---
"That wasn't exactly the assignment." She was frowning, almost just like he’d imagined her at the window. But they were in her office in the light of day and she folded her arms over her chest as she stared him down.
He knew that look.
He tossed the bag onto the desk, open end first, the bundle of parchment slid out as it all tumbled down in front of her. She watched it all fall, not bothering to move a thing out of the way. She didn't even reach for them after the documents settled.
"You asked me to prove that I could get in and back out before you knew I was there. But, you didn’t say that it was
your
room." His arms mirrored hers, crossing over his chest. His sleeves had been rolled back to show bare forearms while hers were covered in dark metal gauntlets, tight leather straps and sharp edges and, he was sure it couldn't be comfortable the way she pressed them so tightly together.
"It wasn’t pertinent to the task-" she paused and her eyes fell to his arms, head tilting and brow arched.
Against his own best judgement his hands dropped to his sides and only when she lifted her chin as if in approval, did he take a breath.
"...
However
, the assignment I gave you was to gather the
documents
from the bag. Not to bring me the whole Maker-damned thing."
"Yes, but-"
She held up a hand to stop him, her head shaking. Her eyes were dark and fierce and that too was a look he knew well. He closed his mouth slowly.
"No-" she shrugged and both of her hands went to the desk- "you did not complete the task as assigned. If I cannot trust you to handle matters when there is nothing at risk, I cannot trust you at all. You'll do it again. And you'll do it right."
---
He heard the threat in her voice, where none had been spoken. It hadn’t seemed like such an important distinction at the time, the bag versus the documents, but his pride would not let him forget the difference a second time. And he knew he could do it better: the timing, the retrieval, the window on his way out.
It was the same task again: get in, retrieve an item, get out undetected.
The room was as dark and quiet as it had been the night before and he found the satchel easily enough, even though it had been stored somewhere new. This time the latch fell open quickly in his fingers, but there were no documents inside. He tossed the still open bag on the bed and retraced his steps, looking for the bundle of parchment.
When he heard the footsteps, he stopped searching and crept near to the door, to listen for voices. She was there- he could tell by the fall of her boots on the stone, the rhythm with which she walked.
No voices sounded and her footsteps drew closer still.
The bag was in his hand in an instant, thought he wasn’t sure it was right, and it was empty and looked like any bag that could’ve been carried by nearly anyone. On impulse, he grabbed the sword leaning against the wall on his way out. That at least, was unique and could prove exactly, where he had been. It was too large to do anything but carry it- and she was too close for him to be able to do anything other than make it outside (barely), remembering to close the window behind him, and out of sight of the window before there was light in the room again.
---
He regretted the sword as soon as he managed to get to safety. And then again an hour later when he returned to his room. The look on her face-
Never again did he want to see that face.
Her lips curled menacingly and even without the dark armor or weapons he was used to seeing her with, when she stalked towards him, he could feel the anger off her as though it was a tangible thing. His hands instinctively went for a dagger, but a twitch of her lips and fingers warned him away.
Once he was still, she held up a hand and made a sweep of his room, finding the bag and the sword where he’d left them in the corner.
“Commander, I-”
“No,” she said with a determined shake of her head. “No, you don’t get to speak right now.” Her words were clipped, angry and yet she held them together more than he thought the fury emanating from her would have allowed. The only sound in his room then was her heavy footfalls as she crossed the room. She stopped in front of the sword and reached out for it, almost tenderly.
“Tomorrow- at dawn-” she gripped the sword tight in hand, knuckles whitening and hefted it so the blade pointed at him- “you’ll report to the Captain of the Guard. If you want a sword- you’ll fight with the guard.”
A tendril of dark hair curled over his shoulder as he bowed his head. “That’s not what I want,” he said and his eyes flicked down to her sword. “The bag was empty...”
The sword wavers in front of him and then dips low as she turns away.
Without looking back at him she says, “Those are my orders.”
---
He spent a week in the guard, assigned to the farms surrounding the keep, to merchants as protection and escort, and the last day he was under the keep, clearing rocks from a blocked path. He found it almost rewarding, in a way (if it had still belonged to his family) that he might have enjoyed: working with the guards with the good-natured ribbing that comes with long hours together.
It was something he had been missing for a long time.
She found him on the last day, while he was moving rubble and covered head-to-toe in dirt and sweat, having discarded his tunic in favor of the cooler air coming up through the tunnel being revealed on the other side.
“Howe.” His name was little more than a grunt but it echoed in the corridor like a command, and he wasn’t the only one that stopped and turned to look at her. The others went back to their work quickly and quietly once they saw her, some of them with looks of sympathy to him first. He carried the boulder in his arms away from the path and then rested in front of her, arms crossed over his chest.
“Warden-Commander.”
“Sergeant Maverlies says the tunnel is nearly clear?”
“Yes, Commander, we should have it finished tomorrow or the day after-” he looks at the tunnel and then with a small shrug turns back to her- “provided the darkspawn keep away long enough to let us finish.”
“Good.” She nods, chin dipping low and there’s a look on her face he can’t quite recognize, her gaze sliding over his arms and chest. Her nose twitches and a lip curls as her gaze meets his.
“When it’s done, find me. I’ll have new orders for you then.”
“Yes, Commander.”
With a sharp turn on her heels she’s gone and he’s staring after her, eyes fixed on the sword strapped to her back and the griffin emblazoned on her shield.
---
“She really doesn’t like you, does she?”
He looks down at Sigrun, walking at his side a book in one hand and her eyes on the Commander a dozen paces or so in front of them. He smiles and plucks the book from her fingers without a look down the long hall towards Ser Cauthrien.
“It does seem that way,” he says with a shrug.
His fingers walk through the pages of the book, flipping through pages without any specific regard to the words. When the Commander stops, so too does he, though it takes Sigrun a few more steps to realize they’ve stopped moving. He might not be looking at her, but he can feel the weight of her gaze and he steps forward, just enough to be able to hand Sigrun’s book back to her.
“Probably because you stole her sword.” Sigrun chuckles and then stuffs the book away into her pack and fills her hand with the weight of her sword instead.
He smiles too, but it’s down the hall at Commander, remembering the surprise on her face when she found him in the dungeon. His own surprise at the woman that had come to see him, the one that had offered him a second chance.
“I’m paying for mistakes,” he said quietly.
“What did you do?” the dwarf asks and his smile carries to her as he turns.
At the end of the hall, the Commander engaged Seneschal Varel and Captain Garavel in discussion. Plans, he assumes, for their trip into the Deep Roads and the care of Vigil’s Keep in her absence.
He lets out a small but throaty laugh, on that makes her turn towards he and Sigrun, as his smile fades. “I lived.”
---
Sigrun might have asked him what he meant, had the Warden Commander’s stern call not interrupted their conversation. Sergeant Maverlies had appeared with news that the path below the keep was open enough for further investigation. He had seen the Warden Commander, with all her calm affectations, look to him, grey eyes piercing- searching or something.
“Howe,” she’d called. “Sigrun. Oghren. You’re with me.” Each of her words where laced with steel: clipped, hard sounds that did not roll easily from between pressed lips.
There’d been no further instruction- but he gathered his things, testing the string on his bow before sliding it in place between his shoulders where it belonged. The weight of it, once in place, and his daggers, were a comfort. And with just that, he felt taller; he felt a new confidence almost like a belonging. Perhaps being a Warden would not always feel like such a burden- or, a punishment.
And that just maybe, he was done proving that he was worthy.
---
He and Sigrun were sent ahead, crouching in the dark shadows cast by uneven stone walls, to scout for traps and darkspawn. They found both.
Or maybe the darkspawn found them.
Either way, as Nathaniel nocked an arrow, Sigrun had both daggers in hand and was shouting for the others. An arrow flew at he approaching genlock and he took a step back from the tripwire, just in front of them.
“Commander!” He was looking for Ser Cauthrien, ready to point out the wire as she and Oghren rounded the corner behind them. The clanging of heavy armor echoed in the stone chamber and then Sigrun yelled, jumping the wire and charging the genlock who had caught Nathaniel’s arrow in its arm.
“Howe, let us by.” Her command rang in his ears and he knelt down to release the trigger on the the tripwire.
Sigrun had the genlock down, but more were approaching around the far side of the chamber. He eyed the Warden Commander with something like impatience before he focused on the wire, found it’s connection and then grabbed his dagger to cut it loose. He held up a hand at Ser Cauthrien, who huffed and her armor scrapped on stone as she shifted anxiously behind him, sword at the ready.
The wire came free and he was barely on his feet again before she and Oghren were pushing passed him to join Sigrun. Someone- Sigrun he thought- yelled a battle charge and his head was full of the loud clattering sounds of battle.
He watched the fight, moving within range of it as he put his dagger away and reached over his shoulder for another arrow. The Warden Commander yanked her sword out of a falling hurlock, and Nathaniel watched as she kicked its body away, freeing her sword in time to swing it into the neck of a charging genlock. It went down with little more than a grunt from the Commander and she was turning around to strike at another charging after Oghren.
A roar sounded from the hall beyond, and rocks shifted, dust drifted down from the walls and ceiling. One of his arrows pierced the neck of a hurlock, and Sigrun’s dagger found it’s chest and with a spray blood across her arm, it went down.
Just as he knocked a new arrow, when an ogre stomped into the chamber. His arrow flew, singing into the ogre’s knee. It crashed forward and as the rest of Wardens moved to get out of it’s way long enough to redirect their attacks, he slung his bow and reached for the daggers at his waist.
He crept into shadow, approaching from the side to get around to the ogre’s back, as its large hand made a swipe for Oghren. The dwarf cursed, something about
sodding nug-humpers
, and swung his axe up at the creature’s wrist. All of them were focused now, the Ogre was the last of them and Nathaniel waited in the shadows, judging, calculating and balancing his options against Sigrun’s movements. She must have sensed him then and she left a hole between her and the Commander for him.
He dragged the shadows with him as he ran, blending into the space and then kicking up as the ogre’s knee dropped with one of the Commander’s strikes. Distantly, he heard an exclamation that sounded like his name as see realized what he was doing. And then, his daggers jabbed into its back and he hauled himself up, slashing as he pulled one of the daggers away. A warm, heavy slap of blood landed on his breeches and he moved again, striking with the other dagger, earning him what felt like an equal measure of blood an ogre bits.
The was a sickening crunch below him, his own stomach dropping at the noise, uncertain if it was the ogre or one of his fellow Warden that had taken the blow. Then, the ogre dipped down and he had just enough time to grab his daggers and drop into a roll as he was propelled forward by its fall.
“Nathaniel!” Sigrun was moving around the ogre and her heard her voice above the scrape of bone on rock as it collapsed and he found himself on his fists and feet, daggers gripped tight and held to his wrists.
But when he looked up, it wasn’t Sigrun’s face he saw first.
“Are you injured?” the Commander asked, reaching her free hand out to him. He made a mental check, out of breath, and his knees hurt from slapping down on the stone, but no-
“No, I’m fine,” he slipped his daggers away and took her hand. “Thank you, Warden Commander.”
“Cauthrien.”
---
The walk back through the tunnels to the keep was long and Nathaniel though, more than a little awkward. Would Ser- would
Cauthrien
- continue to treat him as an outcast? Or as though he could still not be trusted?
He had, that first night she’d envoked the Right of Conscription, felt as though she understood what it was like to be set apart from the others. That she knew, what it was like to be inexorably linked to the name of a man that had done and ordered done, horrible things. In the eyes of the kingdom, she was some sort of
hero
, sent to Amaranthine in care of the Warden who had saved all of Ferelden from the Blight.
And he, was a thief. An archer. The son of Rendon Howe.
Maybe that’s how he would always be seen.
She had kept pushing him towards something, to be better- to prove that he was better and what had he done? Stolen her sword.
The sword.
Not a single story had been told about the dragon of Loghain Mac Tir that did not involve that sword and he has swiped it from her room like a petty trinket; just to prove that he could.
As each of them started the retreat to their rooms, for baths and rest, he followed her instead.
“Warden Commander?” He called out just before she rounded the corner towards her room, and it was almost strange coming at it from this direction. He fought the chuckle that came with that thought.
“Yes?”
She turned towards him, hands empty for only a moment as she crossed them in place. There was something there- interest perhaps, or annoyance? Impatience, he decided and pressed ahead until they were only paces apart.
“I wanted to apologize,” he said, struggling with the idea that he could add her name to those words. It came, but slowly. “...Cauthrien.”
“Oh?” She canted her head, and it showed off the long line of her neck, from hairline to armor and he squirmed under the gaze of her dark eyes.
He nodded, and perhaps too quickly, from the way her lips quirked as though she might smile. That in itself was a frightening thought and he almost rather she was mad, than that she found him somehow... amusing.
“For the sword, Warden Commander. I shouldn’t have taken it,” he said. He forced himself to take the words slowly, to show that he meant them. “I am truly, very sorry.”
“Cauthrien,” she reminded. And then, “It’s forgotten.” There was little inflection and her chin straightened and her hands went down as if to release them both from the conversation.
“Thank you.” He bowed and she nodded her head in kind.
He had no more made it to the corner of the hall, with quick steps carrying him in the other direction towards his own room when he heard her clear her throat.
“And forgiven,” she called after him. “Nathaniel.”