Although Lythe would never consider going back on her vow to aid the Grey Wardens against the threat of a new Blight, she had to admit she hadn’t thought through how different her second time on the surface would be. The last time she had sworn her blade to the Wardens she had marched from Orzammar as part of a full army of dwarves, living and Legion alike, who had then bolstered the greater mixed-race army at Redcliffe. Their pace had been hurried and urgent, and there had been little time to spare for taking in the surface world.
The pace Warden Alistair set now was still steady, but the men he had with him were no army, and Lythe was not marching but riding in a wagon. As for fellow dwarves, there were only four, and the only experienced fighter among them was Nivak, who had stubbornly followed along despite her orders. The others were Rhocanth and the girls, Signy and Falina. The boy could wield a sword but was still untried, Signy was inexplicably a mage and equally naïve, and Falina was just a nugling by Lythe’s eyes. Lythe did have to admit she didn’t understand why Alistair would conscript them of all the options that had been available around that campfire in Gherlen’s Pass, and worried a little about the three youths.
But the girls had their own guardians to look after them, and Lythe’s stint as Rhocanth’s bodyguard had ended with his conscription. They were still on friendly terms, of course, and she would look after him as a fellow warrior in the same troop, but she needed to let go of the idea that she had to keep an eye on him like a wary tezpadam matriarch and her chick.
That meant it was Nivak that drew her attention one evening a couple days out from Orzammar, as she sat inside the tent that had been given to their use. She’d spent a little of the evening around one of the campfires, listening to the banter more than contributing, but now her armor was laid out on the floor and she sat barefoot in her cloth and leather undergear, tending to the upkeep of the dragonbone plate. Such was how Nivak found her, pulling open the tent flap and sticking his helmed head inside. She knew he roved the outskirts of their campsites as much from habit as attempting to teach himself the differences between scouting the Deep Roads versus the surface as rapidly as he could.
R-C-N-T-H, Nivak began when she looked up, spelling the boy’s name in abbreviated sign. After a moment’s pause, he brushed his fingers down one side of his faceplate to indicate tears down a cheek. Outside camp. Alone.
By the use of that one sign, Lythe understood immediately. There was a “crying” sign in Nivak’s handspeak because plenty of those who joined the Legion had a moment where they broke down and cried for the life they had lost. She was not surprised that tears had finally caught up with Rhocanth as well, and her heart went out to him. Such moments were not to be intruded on, though, if the one afflicted sought solitude. They were private things to help purge the built-up pain and misery inside, but if Nivak had decided to draw her attention to it….
“He’s been there a long time?” she had asked, and Nivak had nodded, so here she was, slipping out into the trees as he had directed, dirt and foliage tickling her bare feet. Lythe was no sly rogue but the lack of her plate made it an easier thing to move quietly and listen for the sound of tears. And there, as told, was Rhocanth, huddled into a distraught ball that was so vastly different from the vibrant young man that smiled his way around camp that it almost seemed impossible that the two could be the same.
She looked on in pained sympathy for a moment, as his face was hidden in his arms and he couldn’t see her. He’d come all the way out here to be alone for a reason, and she wouldn’t intrude where she wasn’t wanted…but at the same time, now that she had seen him sobbing so miserably she couldn’t just leave him there. The part of her that still saw the “ward” in the “Warden” didn’t want to.
So she compromised, deliberately shuffling her feet through fallen leaves to make noise as she sidled out from behind a tree, both alerting him to her presence and staying at enough of a distance that she could withdraw quietly if necessary.