#v; the gilded claw - a fistful of sand.

[fog-runner]

The Gilded Claw, in its infancy, was a group of army deserters and barbarians who falsified records to make it seem as though they were Grey Wardens. They would save criminals from headsman’s hill, from the hangman’s noose, from the Grand Tourney.

So many individuals, in the beginning, were chevalier or people impersonating chevalier, all in the name of glory-taking. To bite through the middle of the rations they all shared, of course, was to ruin it for everyone. The recruits, in the beginning, had the same view toward the tourney.

Eventually, with the amount of in-fighting, the Claw disbanded for nearly a decade, re-emerging before the Fifth Blight, under the control of Castor Valerion, a Tevinter military deserter posing as a magister. Sorely, it seemed, they needed change. 

Castor freed and kidnapped Imperium slaves, promising them a new, free life under the mercenary company. Unbeknownst to them, a great many were freed in the name of cheap labour for the thieves’ guild, most Orlais recruits refusing to lift heavy crates.

Thus, most of the bloodshed under the claw was slave blood, both human and elven, with most of them refusing to protest the conditions in which they were held by the company. Some were even gracious, happy just to breathe air that wasn’t Imperium air.

The recruits of the Claw that weren’t slaves in their origin made merry and traded paranoia. A passing comment by a recruit involved silks and incense and trade. Most stopped listening, but soon the suggestion grew into an idea; the opportunity of a lifetime.

The Claw was made aware of a cargo ship sailing toward Orlais from Antiva, containing the very finest silks, intended as a gift for Empress Celene. Most of the recruits fawned over the idea but understood that the group was neither trained enough nor large enough to seize it.

And then a mutiny happened, overnight.

Few were sure how exactly it began, though much more uncertain who was behind the insurrection. Some pointed fingers to the slaves, usually complacent, or the unrest brewing in the group itself. The steadying, stale air brought blood, and voices, and steel.

That night, glasses were broken and blood was spilt. The group, turning in on itself, lost roughly a third of its population, and once the dust had settled at dawn, Castor was found dead among his men. A blade planted firmly in his throat. 

Who did this, no one knew, but a servant girl among them had an eye gouged and spoke no word. 

Treated for the injury by their resident healer, she hardly winced. The remaining eye she had was black and starless, shining glossily like ink. Prodded for answers she never gave, the eye kept its glances toward an elf who was always alone, yet never caught.

He called himself Xath, a former slave abandoned at birth. A deep scar on an otherwise young face showed that once, his mouth had been slit. Perhaps it was a week before he was recruited, perhaps a year, or perhaps a lifetime. 

During the insurrection, he crept into a corner and read.

Or at the very least, that’s what it appeared to be. Most of these men had no idea that slaves weren’t permitted to read, most of these men had no idea that he had never once been taught. 

But his posture with the book, hunched and attentive, seemed to lend credence to the idea that he had done this before, and lent credence to the fact that he had once read, or at least pretended to, to blend in with those that surrounded him.

It was in the morning, roughly a week after, that this young elf had taken control of the Gilded Claw, but he couldn’t do so in name, or else he risked execution.

“We should do it then,” on this morning, he decreed: “We are presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. Just one of those silks could make five of us rich, and though weak and reckless, we’ve enough people to kill the guard captain on the boat.” 

Whispers broke out, and the apprehension in the group was staggering. None wished to do it, fearing how easily they would fall into the hands of angry nobles.

“We go in short of a month, and we slay the beast.” He words it, instead, causing heads to pop up and give him full attention. Beast? “No one will go with an elf to slay a beast, because all are yellow-livered and dull. They fear more elven glory than any beast.”

He cries out into the night, and he is audacious enough to have called their honour to question. Within a day, maybe less, he already has a group together. 

At first, it was mainly elves. So many elves that he needed to deny most. Elves and men and a soldier himself, Etienne Gantz. According to the account, during the day that he dared to insult the honour of these men, he was shown to be kinder than his audacity made him, and knelt in front of the very last recruit; the black eyed servant girl. “Hide not your gaze from me, but your fears, or I will exploit each one I find.” 

He knelt in front of her, picking aside her hands and fingers, so he might look into the gouge where an eye of pure onyx once sat. Sucking in his teeth, he grabs her by the chin, and makes her look at him. “What a beauty you will be,” he whispers, and it is intimate, daring.

 “When you have the finest of Antivan silks sitting where that eye was.” His hands, once at her face, drop as sudden as a stone, to his sides, where they sit and do little afterward. 

Paola Lucia, an Antivan serving girl from the Free Marches, became the most steadfast and foolhardy of his companions. A nobody game-fixing tavern wench.

It didn’t take long for them to realise that their month was almost finished already, and they would have to seek out the ship, or as he called it, the Beast.

They could be years abroad, and some of these men still had families to miss. He was unsure, truly, if it would have felt better if he wasn’t born a slave and would have to worry about a family to lose, or if it was ultimately better that he had no ties at all. 

Ever the pragmatist, the auburn-haired elf stares at the slash across his face, and the whole half of his ear that was missing, and figures it’s better to be a freed slave.

“Get out of the mirror, rabbit. You’ll sit there as long as a lass.” Gantz called, eyes as deep grey as his blade. “How are we going to seek out this ship if you’re wandering through fields in your eyes?” He bends, for a moment, to look at the mirror, and the elf gets up quick.

“I was shaving.”

“Elves don’t shave.”

Xath replies with no short of an affirmative nod, and his gaze gets fixed on the floor, on his toes. He supposes it was hard enough to break the habit of refusing eye contact, but knows deeply that it would mark him as a former slave, so he raises a glance of green toward the soldier. “Your name, Ser? I will need it if you continue to fight by my side.” 

This time he doesn’t allow his eyes to plummet like a stone. This time, he holds them squarely in his grasp, and it stuns him so much that he could look at a child of man, that the soldier waited before he answered. “Ser Etienne Gantz, chevalier.” 

“Ser Gantz, we are to camp by the shore in three days, where we will await the Beast. There is a forest nearby that few are so daring to enter, that few deign even thinking about stepping foot there.” His hair was deep red, like the drying blood of the mutiny.

“There are no forests nearby, rabbit. We are too close to Tevinter.”

“Wrong--- there is one. But, as I said, few even dare.”

The elf watches the Orlesian’s face go from ruddy and healthy looking, to sallow in complexion. Almost ghostly, ungainly, like that of a corpse. It seemed almost as if he’d asked the chevalier to throw down void’s fire to swallow up Andraste herself. 

 “But that’s Arlathan.”