horns up

He’s one of those Qunari, first of all, and you have to understand: unless the Qunari slaves I’ve seen all came on the small side, he’s massive. With things... as they are, I’m not a very tall man, but I’d eat my hat if I even come up to his tit! He’s got to be 20, 25, maybe even 30 stone and he’s covered in scars. Like his name suggests, his horns protrude straight out from the sides of his head and then bend up into points. By the way, unless he and his mercenary company (called the “Chargers”) are really committed to taking the piss, he truly goes by that entire name. 

Intimidating, right?

I was stationed so far South, I’d never fought any Qunari, but there’s not a Tevene soldier alive that hasn’t heard stories of the ox-men. We all heard how they know no concept of family, no emotion or passion except for war and loyalty to the monolith of the Qun. 

I suspect The Iron Bull isn’t from those tales. 

He’s a fearsome warrior, I saw that myself, but besides that? He talks loudly and endlessly of his love of good food and redheaded barmaids. As I gritted my teeth through my second medical examination in as many days, this time by the Chargers’ company medic, Stitches, The Iron Bull stood outside the tent and attempted to distract me with tales of Nevarran dragon hunting. The distraction actually worked far better than I expected, if only because I was caught up trying to decide whether he was actually making innuendos, going on about thrusting his axe into “thick, hot dragonflesh”, or if it was all an unfortunate coincidence. Even now I can hear his booming laughter outside this tent. 

He isn’t even like any Captain I’ve seen. One of the first things one of his men said to him when he brought me to his camp was, “Andraste’s tits, Captain, we can’t leave you anywhere!” There was no punishment given for his disrespect. He encourages their input, without expecting some drawn out show of lowering themselves to preface it. He even pitches in during camp setup and breakdown– less at the moment, I’m told, but that’s my fault.

You see, the Iron Bull lost his eye saving my life. I’m a stranger to him. A Tevinter stranger. I still don’t understand it. 

...I don’t want to write about deserting, and what happened three days ago during the fight doesn’t matter. The Tribune and his men are all dead. But I’ll write about afterwards. 

I saw The Iron Bull kneeling in front of me. I was so dazed, I thought he was going to kill me now that he was finished with the others, but enough of the spots cleared from my sight and I saw that he was hunched over, holding his eye as blood poured down his forearm. 

He asked if I was ok. It made me laugh, which, if you didn’t know, hurts like a howling bitch when you’ve got a cracked rib. 

“What about your eye,” I said.

“That’s why we’re made with two of them,” he replied, like it could’ve been a chipped tooth, for all he cared, “Plus, I’ll get to wear an eyepatch, now.” 

He took a tunic off one of the dead, gave it to me to cover up. I gave him my torn shirt, which he wound around his head to soak up some of the blood. He introduced himself and asked what I was called. 

I said I was Cremisius Aclassi, and when he raised an eyebrow I was braced for a sneering remark like, “What’s your real name.” I had abandoned the life I’d worked for since I was fifteen, the life that freed me, and I was sick to death of being mocked. I admit, I was ready to pop the guy right in the face and likely vomit from the pain of it, wisdom be damned. 

But all he said was, “That’s a mouthful. Do you have a nickname?” 

“Says the man called ‘The Iron Bull’,” I said. I’m not blessed with an overabundance of self preservation, but it just made him laugh. 

He wanted to call me “Krem.” I accepted. I intended to walk out of that tavern alone and find a place to hide and recover, so it didn’t much matter to me. But just as soon as I was on my feet I was toppling over, so when The Iron Bull caught me, he insisted that he take me back to his camp, where “Stitches can patch us both up.” 

I accepted that as well.

As he took me to the outskirts of Hunterfell, and later, when I was laid out on this cot, waiting for the medic to determine if his Captain would ever see out of his left eye again, I wondered when The Iron Bull was going to bring it up. 

He must have heard the Tribune reading my charges, and there’s no chance he didn’t see what I am. I wanted to gauge what sort of lie I needed to tell, how much of my pride I was expected to swallow until I was healthy enough to leave. I’d already learned that there was no place for me once people knew the truth.

It… hasn’t played out how it ought, which is becoming a theme with The Iron Bull.

He came in before Stitches did and sat down on the ground in front of my cot with a remorseful groan, like he’d already realized that he wasn’t going to like the process of getting up again. He’d been outfitted with a proper bandage around his face, and I could see the swelling and the dark bruising against his silver skin peeking out from it in the dim candlelight. I was too exhausted to fill up with defensive anger when he looked me over now. We began speaking at the same time.

“Look, it’s been a long fucking day, so just ask what you must and be quick about it–”

“I’m going to brief Stitches on how to approach this, but I need to ask some questions–”

We stared at eachother. 

“What?” I said.

He sighed. “I’m sorry, kid. You’ve gone through a lot, so I thought I’d follow your lead, make things simple, but I’ve probably been scaring the shit out of you instead.” 

“...What?” I said again, getting tired of the cryptic act, fast. The Iron Bull nodded, like he could see exactly where my head was at. It’s not the first time I got that sense, and I don’t suspect it’ll be the last.

“You’re a man,” he said, “Is that right?” 

“I– What?” ...Really! I was so bloody airheaded that the first fucking time someone saw what I am and still called me a man, I don’t even confirm it right away! As soon as my mind caught up to my mouth, I waved my hands and sputtered something painfully stupid like, “I mean– yes! That’s right! You’re… you’re right. I just didn’t think– I didn’t expect–”

He nodded again, which shut me up, and he stared at me with this strange look in his eye. It didn’t piss me off like it did before, but it made me uncomfortable enough that I looked up at the shadows on the ceiling of the tent.

“How did you know?” I asked. It was a little easier to shape my mouth around than ‘Why do you believe me?’

That’s when he told me about a word in Qunlat. I don’t think I can spell it, “a-qun” something or other, but he said it meant someone “born one gender, but living like another.” 

“What does the Qun do with these people?” I thought it was an insult. There’s no word for me in Tevene. There are descriptions of fraud, at most. For there to be an insult in Qunlat told me I’m not alone. Believe me, I’m still reeling from that. But it put me on guard again, all the same. 

“Whoa, kid, back up,” he said, “There’s no punishment, if that’s what you’re thinking. The [a-qun somethings] are treated exactly as they are– real men and women. The Qun’s practical that way.” 

I must have given him a really skeptical look then, because he laughed really loud. 

“You think Tevinter is threatened by the Qun because it’s torture?” He waved the topic off with his hand and straightened out his legs with a groan. “Point is, running off a perfectly good soldier because his insides and outsides don’t match is stupid. Shouldn’t have happened.” 

“You really think that?” I asked. 

“I do,” he said.

After that, he talked to me about Stitches, asked me what I wanted him to know, how I wanted the examination to happen, whether I wanted company. He started telling me that unless I started foaming at the mouth or something, Stitches would be instructed to stop at any time, etc, etc, etc.

It was a lot. Too much. The pain in my ribs was making me sick, all of a sudden.

“I just want to get this over with,” I told him, and he got that same weird, intense look, so I scrambled to summarize, to prove he could stop, “Stitches can know if he doesn’t call me a girl and doesn’t talk about it to anyone, I want to be as clothed as possible… Maybe company outside the tent would be good.” 

“Ok,” he said, surprising me with how quickly he responded after dragging things out so long. He got up stiffly and said, “I’ll go give him the heads up.” 

“If you’re Qunari and not Tal-Vashoth, why are you running around Thedas with a mercenary company?” I blurted out as he started to leave. If you think I had a really good reason for asking that when I did, I appreciate your faith in me, but you’d be wrong. It just popped in my head… and maybe I was getting nervous about him leaving.