The Stolen Throne

14

Katriel awoke to darkness. There was a moment of terror when she had no idea where she was, and the thought of being strung up in some giant spider’s cocoon almost overwhelmed her. It seemed as if there was no air, that she would suffocate wrapped up in spider silk and left to go mad as she felt unseen legs skittering over her flesh. Then she calmed herself as she realized that the only thing surrounding her were Maric’s arms.

He slept, curled into her as he held her protectively. She could hear his soft breathing against her neck, feel the beating of his heart through his chest. It was a comforting feeling, and Katriel relaxed and let her heart slow. It was seductive, the idea that they might be able to lie there in the shadows forever, that she would never need to tell Maric who she really was. The fact that they weren’t actually safe, that the giant spiders were undoubtedly still out there, was somehow easier to ignore when she was in his arms.

The spiders did not appear, but by the time they all began to stir, the faint clicking sounds had returned. Katriel shivered and fumbled about until she was able to light the campfire again, and this drew Loghain from the dark recesses at the back of the chamber where the water was. He emerged, the flickering firelight revealing his bare chest as well as her own lack of covering, Maric stirring beside her. Their eyes met, and then they looked away and began donning their armor.

When Maric awoke, he smiled warmly at Katriel and brushed his hand across her cheek. She clutched at that hand and held it there. All the things that were unsaid seemed like they were now forever beyond saying. It was too late.

None of them said anything, nor acknowledged what had happened during the night, if indeed night it was. It was as dark as when they had slept, the gloom around them as oppressive. All of them seemed much more interested in moving quickly than in talking, and quietly they packed up what little they had and left the camp. They needed to move fast if they were going to avoid another encounter.

Torches held aloft, they moved through the narrower paths between the remnants of the old buildings, stepping carefully among the ancient rubble. The shadows flickered around them, and each time they heard the distant clicking sounds, they stopped and warily stared into the darkness, waiting with swords ready for the spiders to rush out at them.

The dwarven ruins were now covered in black soot, scorched from one end of the cavern to the other. The dust still clung to the air, but most of the webbing that had covered the upper reaches of the thaig was now gone. The faint torchlight did not allow them to see up that far, but there were hints of what the dwarves who had once lived here might have seen: great stone buttresses carved with runes and enormous crumbling statues of dwarven kings staring down from the heights at their people.

The sight of those ancient statues filled Katriel with a sense of sadness. How must they have felt now, to see their people fled, their city fallen to pieces and covered in ash?

“Is it possible to get higher?” she asked. “If we could shine a bit more light on the roof, I could see more of the statues.”

Rowan stared at her incredulously. “Those statues are probably covered in the spiders’ nests. Do you really want that close a look at them?”

Katriel shuddered at that thought and reluctantly shook her head. Still, she couldn’t help but wish there was a way to convey this story to those who had no hint of the ancient lands that lay under their feet. As much as her bard training made her a spy, it also made her a storyteller. These ruins cried out to her, and it broke her heart that they needed to pass by it all so quickly.

The group moved through what might once have been a great promenade of the city. Once a palace had been carved into the face of the rock wall itself, and Katriel pictured beautiful archways and stairs leading from one gentle terrace to the next. She imagined merchants selling goods from their stalls on the colored cobblestones, with great fountains shooting columns of water in the air. Once there had been grandeur, but now there was little more than crumbling ruin and the husks of buildings so fallen apart, they could not even be approached for all the scattered rocks and collapsed floors.

The remnants of the palace now showed only as broken columns and worn holes that no doubt led into a veritable labyrinth of passages within the rock. The home of the spiders, Loghain pointed out. Indeed, as they passed through the promenade, it was easy to see that here the greatest amount of burnt webbing had collapsed from above. Great mounds of charred ash and sticky tendrils clung to everything, some of it several feet thick or worse.

As the webs had burned and collapsed, they had brought down with them the charred remains of spiders, some of them still quivering lifelessly as they lay on their backs with hairy legs splayed. There were many bones, as well, black and burnt. Most were only small shards, while others seemed to be bigger and a few were even whole. Katriel noticed something odd amid the piles and fished it out. It was a skull, vaguely human but clearly monstrous. And large. The entire promenade was all but filled with bones just like it, like a great rat’s nest of a graveyard had been spilled over the entire ruin all at once.

“This must be what they eat,” Katriel said quietly.

“They eat darkspawn?” Maric asked, looking at the skull uncertainly.

There was no answer to give. None of them had ever seen a darkspawn before, and until they saw the bones, they had never seen anything that might have suggested the tales of the old wars, of times when the darkspawn had spilled onto the surface world in great events called Blights, might actually be true. But there they were.

“Those bones could be anything,” Rowan suggested.

Nobody could answer. If those bones didn’t belong to darkspawn, then they belonged to something else just as monstrous, something equally unknown.

They trudged through the soot and bones, sometimes wading through piles up to their hips in order to keep going. They then climbed over a large region so choked with piles of rubble, there was no telling what sorts of buildings might once have been there. Not a single wall or column remained upright. It was if the entire area had been leveled by some great event, or maybe just had not been built as well as the rest of the city to begin with.

“These could be the slums,” Katriel remarked as they climbed. “All the thaigs were supposed to have them, areas where the casteless lived. There are stories that when the noble houses pulled out of the Deep Roads, they actually left the casteless behind. Forgot them.” She spread her arms to indicate the crumbled stones around them. “One day the casteless came out of their slums only to find everyone else gone. An empty city with no one left to protect them from the darkspawn.”

Maric shuddered. “Surely they wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” Katriel asked him sharply. “Every society has its lowest of the low. Do you think it would be so different in human society? Do you think anyone would go out of their way to ensure that the elves in the alienages were safe if a crisis came to the city?”

Maric seemed taken aback. “I would.”

The anger dissolved in her immediately, and she chuckled, shaking her head. Well, of course Maric would. And coming from him, one could almost believe it was true. She wondered if he would be different once years of power had worn on him, chipped away at his naïveté. Would he still be the same man?

“It’s said some of the casteless tried to run,” she continued, “tried to reach Orzammar on their own. But they couldn’t run fast enough. The rest of them simply . . . waited for the end.”

“Really?” Rowan snorted with derision. “And who would have survived to carry that tale, then?”

Katriel shrugged, unfazed. “Not all of them died, perhaps. Some of those who fled must have reached Orzammar. The rest perhaps lie under our feet even now.”

“We’ve heard enough stories,” Loghain snapped, though even he looked disturbed. Katriel shot him an annoyed glance but remained silent. She wasn’t trying to frighten anyone; these things actually happened here, and there was no point in pretending that they didn’t. But she wasn’t about to press the idea.

None of them spoke after that. The thought that they were climbing over the bodies of dwarves seemed worse, somehow, than dead spiders and darkspawn. Not fled but left behind to die, their screams still echoing in the caves centuries later.

It seemed like hours before they finally found the way out of the thaig. A great set of metal doors, over forty feet high, led into the rock face. Unlike the doors they had encountered at the cave entrance up on the surface, these had not fallen through age and rust but had been burst inward by some force powerful enough to buckle metal many feet thick. Mostly they lay in rusted pieces, having long ago admitted whatever invader had come to decimate what the dwarves had left behind.

Beyond it lay only shadows.

“How do we know this is the way to Gwaren?” Loghain asked.

Maric turned to Katriel. “Is there anything you can do?” he asked her.

“I can try,” she said hesitantly.

Kneeling with her torch and studying the various runes nearby for over an hour, she declared most of them scoured beyond reading. Much of the rock surface had been cracked or chipped off through whatever violent event had knocked the fortress doors inward, and try though she might, Katriel could not find a single rune that she recognized.

“I don’t know where this passage leads,” she confessed, “or if there are even directions.” She felt frustrated. It was her advice that had led them down into the Deep Roads, and they were counting on her to guide them. But it seemed increasingly likely that they would die down there, perish in the darkness with so much dirt and rock pressing down over their heads, and that made it so much worse.

“Wonderful,” Rowan swore under her breath.

Maric looked down at the rubble strewn on the ground, and after a moment’s hesitation reached down to pick something up. The others turned, surprised to see him holding an axe. It was large, with a wickedly curved blade and a spike on the reverse end to prove that it had never been meant for any tree. The more interesting aspect, however, was its primitive make. This was made by no dwarven smith; it was a rusted piece of black metal, crudely attached to its long handle and heavy enough that Maric needed both hands even to pick it up.

As Maric stared at Loghain grimly, the axe head finally fell off the handle and landed back on the floor with a loud thud. The echoes rang throughout the cavern, and almost seemed to be answered by distant clicking back in the ruins.

“Let’s go,” Loghain murmured.

Several hours were spent cautiously traveling down this new branch of the Deep Roads. There was still webbing, and some of it was strewn across the passages waiting to ensnare them. These they needed to burn through, but Loghain remarked that there seemed to be far less of it than before.

Instead, it seemed as if the passages were darker, if that were possible. The torches shone less brightly, and the shadows closed in on them as if they resented the presence of travelers. Even the stone of the walls seemed tainted, somehow. There was a feeling of oppression that made it difficult to breathe, and all of them waited in anticipation for what was to come at them next.

And something was coming. They could feel it.

“Perhaps we should turn back,” Rowan suggested quietly. Her voice was low and afraid, and she stared off into the distant blackness. It truly felt as if there were eyes out there, watching. Circling.

“Back to the spiders?” Maric rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.”

“We’ve no webs to burn down this time, should the spiders come again,” Loghain said with concern. He, too, stared off into the distance, and seemed less than pleased with the nothing he saw.

Katriel took out her dagger warily. “But there’s no other way. We have to continue.” The fear crawled into her stomach and settled there. She was not unaccustomed to battle—but her training had been in fighting men. She knew how to cut a throat, and how to plant her dagger in a vulnerable spot such as an armpit. She could take on an opponent far more armored than herself without fear. None of her training had prepared her to fight monsters.

Maric sensed her discomfort and put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. It was a small gesture, but still Katriel appreciated it.

They had no choice but to press forward. The number of bones strewn about slowly increased, as did general litter and the smell of earthy decay. The walls gradually became wet-looking and sticky, speckled with rot and fungus. Some of the fungus even glowed in the dark, but did so with a strange purplish tinge that unnerved them far more than it actually lit their path.

They passed an area full of old spider corpses. Some of them were easily twice the size of the creatures they had fought, old and desiccated husks that were dusty and brittle to the touch. Most of them were in pieces.

“Something ate these,” Loghain pointed out.

“Ate the spiders?” Maric made a disgusted face. “Maybe it was revenge.”

“Maybe whatever ate them doesn’t care what it eats,” Rowan remarked.

“Darkspawn,” Katriel said ominously, and then scowled when the others looked at her reproachfully. “There is no need to avoid the truth. Obviously they hunt each other.”

Rowan glanced at the rot on the walls, looking nauseated. “Should we be worried . . . about disease? The darkspawn spread some kind of sickness, don’t they?”

“They taint the land around them with their very touch,” Katriel spoke in a hushed voice. “We’re seeing it now, on the wall and everything else here. We are in their domain.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” Maric said lightly. “All we need is a dragon to come along now, to really top off our day.”

Loghain snorted. “You insisted on coming down here.”

“So now it’s my fault, is it?”

“I know whose fault it isn’t.”

“Great!” Maric shrugged. “Just throw me at the darkspawn, then, whenever they show up. The rest of you can get a head start while they gobble me up.”

Loghain hid his amused smile. “Nice of you to offer. You have been getting a little chubby these last months. There’s more of you to eat, I’ll wager.”

“Chubby, he says.” Maric laughed lightly, looking toward Katriel. “If they ate him, they’d choke on the bile.”

“Hey, now,” Loghain complained without heat.

“There is no ‘hey, now.’ You started it.”

Rowan sighed. “You two are like such little boys sometimes, I swear.”

“I was just offering up a very reasonable—” His words were cut off as a new sound came from far ahead in the passages, a soft and unnatural rasping sound. Like many things awakening in the darkness, like many things slithering gently over the rocks. They all spun and stared ahead into the shadows, rooted to the spot.

The sound was gone as quickly as it began, and they shuddered.

“On second thought,” Maric muttered, “don’t throw me to them.”

Their weapons out and ready, they edged forward carefully. It was not long before they came to an area where much of the passage walls had collapsed, revealing caves beyond. There were more underground passages than the ones they walked in, it seemed. Everything was coated in black fungus, and the smell grew increasingly more potent, more rancid. Dead maggots littered the floor amid bones and pieces of armor.

The skeleton of a dwarf lay against the wall. He still wore a rusty breastplate and a large helmet that covered most of his skull. It seemed as if he had merely sat down to rest, or to contemplate his death in these roads so far from his home.

“What’s that?” Maric said curiously, approaching the skeleton. These were the first bones they had seen so far that actually indicated that anything other than monsters had once moved through these passages. Katriel wondered why the body would have been left undisturbed, if it had died here. There seemed to be no shortage of creatures in these parts willing to feed on corpses. Or that was her assumption.

“Be careful,” Katriel warned him. “The Veil is thin in places like this, and it could attack you.” Wherever there had been a great deal of death the Veil became thin, allowing spirits and demons to cross over from their realm. They hungrily possessed anything alive, or that had once been alive. This was where tales of walking corpses and skeletons had come from, spirits driven mad to find themselves in a body devoid of the life they craved. She had never seen one herself, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Maric slowed his approach and poked the skeleton’s helmet carefully, and exhaled in relief as it did nothing. Then, his eyes squinted curiously as he noticed something strange. He moved to look where the dwarf’s right hand was covered by several large rocks and gingerly stuck his own hands in between them and tried to pull something out.

“You need help?” Loghain offered.

“No, I think I—” Maric suddenly stumbled back as the rocks gave way. The skeleton toppled over, the helmet falling loose and rattling loudly on the ground, and most of the bones crumpled under the weight of the old armor. Maric fell backwards, his hands coming up with a longsword that he waved about while trying to get his balance.

Loghain darted forward, ducking under Maric’s inadvertent swing and catching him. “Careful, there,” he said with annoyance.

Maric was about to reply, but when he held up the longsword he had pried from the stones, he became enraptured with it instead. The entire weapon was a pale ivory hue, the hilt wrought with gentle curves and the blade inlaid with brightly glowing runes. It was untouched by rust, and the blue glow from the runes was almost brighter than the light from their torches. Maric swung it about gently, his eyes wide with awe.

“Andraste’s blood,” he swore under his breath. “It’s so light! Like it weighs nothing!”

“Dragonbone,” Katriel said without hesitation. She could tell from the hue, as well as from the fact that it contained so many runes. Enchanters claimed that certain metals held the magical runes far better than others, and dragonbone best of all. It was why the Nevarran dragon hunters were said to have hunted dragons nearly to extinction ages ago. The value of such a sword was incalculable.

Rowan’s brow furrowed. “And why was it just sitting there? Why wouldn’t these darkspawn have found and taken it?”

As if in answer to their question, one of Maric’s swings brought the longsword close to the wall. In response, the black foulness that clung there crawled to move away from the blade. He paused and touched the sword to the wall directly, and the rot moved away even more quickly. It made a faint unpleasant keening sound, and after a moment the stone where the sword touched was bare.

“Maybe they couldn’t take it,” Maric commented, awed.

They stood and stared at the remnants of the crumbled skeleton. How long had he sat there? Had he tried to hide the sword, or had the rocks fallen upon him? Was this some dwarven nobleman, or one of the casteless who had tried to make the dangerous journey to Orzammar? Had he died here alone?

“I guess you got yourself a new sword,” Loghain remarked.

“I think it suits a king.” Katriel smiled at the thought of Maric having a magical sword, just like in the old tales where it seemed every handsome king and every erstwhile hero possessed such a blade. More often they wrested such weapons from the hands of terrible beasts or found them in the treasure hordes of mighty dragons—but the idea that Maric could be such a king like in those tales pleased her. Those tales always ended well, didn’t they? The hero got out of the labyrinth, and the hero always ended up with his true love. Everything turned out well.

Rowan nodded to the skeleton. “He may have been a king as well, for all we know. Let’s hope we don’t end up with a similar fate.”

It was a sobering thought.

The minutes inched by as they moved on, leaving the dwarven skeleton behind. Maric walked at the fore, his new blade bared. The soft glow from its runes offered a small degree of comfort, though it was fleeting. The faint sounds of movement ahead got more frequent, and along with them, they began to hear a strange humming. It was deep and alien, a reverberating sound that they felt in their chests and that made their skin crawl.

“What is that?” Rowan asked. She looked at Katriel. “Do you know?”

Katriel shrugged, bewildered. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“It’s getting louder.” Loghain frowned. He wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead and glanced at Maric. “How many do you think there will be?”

Maric stared ahead, licking his lips nervously. “No idea.”

“We may want to find more defensible ground.”

“Where?” Rowan seemed ready for an imminent attack, her eyes wide and nervously searching the shadows. “Back to the ruins? Will they come that far?”

“Look there!” Katriel shouted, pointing ahead.

The four of them froze as they saw a humanoid shape slowly shamble toward them out of the darkness. At first it seemed to be a man, but as it drew closer, they saw it clearly was not. It was a hideous mockery of a man, skin puckered and boiled with bulging white eyes and a toothy, malicious grin. It wore a mishmash of metal armor, some rusted and some of it held together with scraps of frayed leather, and in its hands it carried a wicked-looking sword, all points and odd angles.

The creature held its sword in front of it in a menacing manner, but it did not charge them. It moved slowly but incautiously, staring at them hungrily as if they didn’t represent a true threat of any kind.

The deep humming was coming from it. The creature was moaning softly, almost chanting, and this moan built upon the sounds of many others behind it in the shadows. They hummed in unison, a hushed and deadly whisper the creatures spoke as one.

Maric took a step backwards, gulping loudly.

More began to appear behind the first. More tall ones, some wearing strange headdresses and blindfolds, others in more impressive armor covered in dangerous spikes. Some wore little armor at all, their black and diseased skin covered in scars. There were shorter ones, as well, ones almost dwarf-sized with pointed ears and wide, demonic grins. All of them walked as calmly as the first, shambling toward them while moaning and hissing softly. The sound was loud now, reverberating around them like a physical force.

“Darkspawn,” Katriel announced unnecessarily.

Loghain held his sword up before him warningly, watching the creature at the head of the emerging pack. “Move back,” he murmured.

They slowly backed up, warily matching the pace that the darkspawn approached them with. At the back, Rowan turned about and suddenly halted, gasping in fear. “Loghain!”

In the flickering light of Rowan’s torch, more of the monsters could be seen drawing near from behind. They were surrounded.

“How did they get behind us?” Maric asked, panic creeping into his voice.

“Careful,” Loghain warned. The four of them backed up against the wall of the passage, keeping close. They watched the darkspawn advance, their weapons held at the ready. Even with their prey cornered, the creatures did not accelerate. Their hum became louder, reached a hungry, fever pitch.

“Will your sword keep them back?” Rowan cried at Maric, forced to shout to be heard over the unnerving sound.

Maric tested his glowing blade, waving it threateningly at the nearest darkspawn. The creature flinched and hissed at Maric angrily, baring rows of jagged teeth, but it did not retreat. “It doesn’t look like it!” Maric yelled.

The darkspawn continued their slow, inevitable approach. Twenty feet. Then ten. The four of them stood with back pressed against back, sweat pouring as they watched and waited.

As the first of the taller darkspawn got close, it bared its fangs and roared. Maric stepped forward and slashed the dragonbone longsword across its chest in a wide arc. Where the blade touched, the creature’s skin sizzled and it reared back in agony, issuing a gurgling scream.

This finally seemed to energize the rest of the horde. They roared in turn and began to push forward. Katriel barely knocked a wicked blade aside with her dagger, just escaping being stabbed. Rowan pushed Katriel behind her, interposing her armor to take the darkspawn blows. Maric swung widely with his longsword, taking advantage of the fact that it repelled whichever darkspawn it touched. Loghain kicked one of the smaller creatures back into its fellows, knocking them down, and then began to stab with precise, clean blows.

The ferocity of their defense worked in their favor, at least for a moment, before the darkspawn surge began to push them against the wall. They could not knock the blades aside fast enough, and though Loghain and Rowan kept pushing the creatures back, the others would heedlessly step over their fallen to strike.

The great moaning sound reached a crescendo, drowning out everything but the ring of steel upon steel. Katriel looked around despairingly. She was no warrior like the others, and felt all but useless. Was it truly all going to end here? After all they had been through?

And then a new sound interrupted the battle: the blowing of a horn, three strident notes that rang out into the passages, silencing the darkspawn completely.

Many of the creatures began to turn and hiss with outrage at something that was descending on them from behind. Blue lights lit the Deep Roads from that direction, and it took only a moment for the first dwarves to appear—dwarves, not some new monster of the deep. Maric glanced in Katriel’s direction, shocked, but she felt the same as he did. After journeying all this time, to find someone else down here in this oppressive darkness, to find anyone, was beyond belief.

Was this their salvation? Were they rescued? Or were these dwarves here to fight the darkspawn for their own meals?

They were warriors, short but bulky dwarves rippling with muscle and covered with bronzed chain. They wielded ornate swords and longspears, and some of them held lanterns hung from long poles that shone with a glittering sapphire light that seemed to cut through the shadows with ease. More strangely, these dwarves all had their faces painted—images of skulls with fangs, giving them a dread and frightening appearance. In some ways they looked almost as frightening as the darkspawn.

As one the dwarves shouted a guttural war cry and began carving through the darkspawn lines with relative ease. The darkspawn all but abandoned their attacks on Maric and Loghain and the others, realizing that these dwarves were the more immediate threat, and turning to defend against the onslaught. The sheer rage and hatred of the darkspawn as they leaped at the dwarves spoke of the fact that these were true enemies. They knew each other and killed each other gladly.

Loghain did not let up, stabbing his blade deep into the back of a darkspawn that had turned away from him. The creature roared in pain as he kicked it off his sword and then turned to the next. Encouraged, Rowan and Maric did the same and began to fight toward the dwarves. Katriel went with them—for all they knew, the dwarves could be worse than the darkspawn, but for the moment they were the enemy of their enemy. They were willing to take their chances.

The result was dramatic. A great cry of terror went up from the darkspawn as their ranks began to dissolve. The ones behind Loghain and the others turned and fled, while the ones caught between them and the dwarves began to fight viciously and desperately. Several of the dwarves were hacked down, only to have their darkspawn killers immediately leaped upon by enraged dwarves.

Within minutes it was over. The last of the darkspawn had fled screaming into the tunnels behind them. What remained was a charnel house of gore, darkspawn bodies littering the tunnel with their black blood pooling over the rocky floor. Only a few dwarves had fallen, and now at least fifty stood staring suspiciously at the humans and elf as if wondering if they shouldn’t be their next victims.

Loghain held his blade firmly and crouched to attack the first dwarf who charged his way. Rowan stood beside him, equally ready though clearly winded by the fight. Katriel moved behind them, wondering if the battle was not yet over. Were the dwarves going to rob them? Slaughter them? Leave them here?

The silence continued until Maric cautiously stepped toward the dwarves. He had black blood splattered across his surcoat, and his sword was dripping with it. He seemed nervous and perhaps even frightened, yet still he put up his blade before the dwarves to show them that he meant no harm. Very slowly he put it down on the ground, and then raised his hands in front of him again. Empty hands, no threat.

“Do you speak the King’s Tongue?” Maric asked, making certain to pronounce each syllable carefully.

One of the larger dwarves, a thick man with a long black beard and a bald head entirely painted to resemble a white skull, sized Maric up. He was dressed in golden plate covered in large spikes, and wielded a warhammer at least as tall as himself, covered in darkspawn blood. “Who do you think taught it to you surfacers?” he growled. The accent was thick, but very understandable. “What sort of fools are you to come down into the Deep Roads? Are you seeking your deaths?”

Maric coughed uncomfortably. “Well . . . your group is here in the Deep Roads, aren’t you?”

The dwarf glanced at his fellows, and they exchanged an amused if grim chuckle. He looked back at Maric. “That is because we are seeking our deaths, human.”

Katriel moved to stand beside Maric, lowering her head respectfully toward the dwarf. “You’re . . . all of you, you’re the Legion of the Dead, aren’t you?” It was only a suspicion, considering what little she knew of the dwarves. But there were only so many of them who would be out in the Deep Roads and away from Orzammar, and these—with their skulls painted onto their faces—brought up something from her memory, a tale she had thought forgotten.

The dwarf seemed impressed. “Aye, you’ve the right of it.”

Loghain shot up a brow, glancing toward Katriel. “And what is that, exactly?”

“I know only a little,” she protested.

Sighing with exasperation, the dwarf turned back to the others with him and mulled over an unpleasant decision. After a moment he shrugged. “Collect our fallen,” he ordered them, “and bring the surfacers back to the camp with us.”

Loghain lifted his sword threateningly, Rowan standing resolute beside him. “I don’t remember us offering to go with you,” he stated in an even tone.

The dwarf paused and regarded them with amusement. “I’ll give you that; I didn’t think you surfacers would want to stay here and let the darkspawn swarm back down on top of you the moment we’ve left . . . but by the Stone, if that’s what you truly want, I’ll not stop you.”

Maric stepped forward and gave the dwarf a pained smile. “We’ve had a difficult time down here, Ser Dwarf. Please excuse our manners. We’ll gladly go to your camp.” He then shot Loghain an incredulous look that said, What are you doing? Loghain stared back at him, and then at the dwarf, before reluctantly sheathing his blade.

The dwarf shrugged. “So be it.” He hefted his warhammer onto his shoulder. “And the name is Nalthur. You’ll not fall behind if you know what’s good for you.”