A Day Left to Remember
~ Cardboard Time Machine
Part I: In the Throngs of War
Fort Drakon, Denerim
How long had they been standing on the steps of Fort Drakon? Thirty minutes? An hour? Cousland could not remember, nor did he care. Their only goal now - and moreover since they had undertaken this quest - was to scale the fort, and slay the demon dragon that waited above; its blue flames scorching scores of men below as it wove through the skies.
A cry took Cousland from his thoughts. Turning, he spotted the next hideous wave emerging from the bowels of the fort. He picked his first opponent easily: a Hurlock, larger than the rest and out for Grey Warden blood. He gripped the spiked mace in his hand; the other was clutched about a bloodied three-foot long sword. The Hurlock carried a hastily crafted spear, and the round spiked shield of his comrades. Cousland advanced only a step, just enough to let his grip loosen on the mace so it dropped to his thigh, and opened his plated chest out just enough as to tempt the Hurlock's spear into attacking a weakened part along his ribs and as the down-thrust from the spear came upon him, he pulled his right leg back in an oblique turn and deflected the shaft with his sword and drove the spiked tip of the mace into the exposed armpit of the Hurlock, sliding his hand up the shaft for a shorter grip. The Hurlock bellowed and screamed, as any creature would, as his lung was punctured and his feet left the ground; Cousland took him backward and down, swiping the sword across the creature's throat and half severing the wretched hell spawn's head.
He turned his face from the hot spray and snapped the sword back up to block another incoming attack from above; brining his head up with the sword, Cousland straightened his legs, hammering the crest of his weapon into the creature's face. Blood and sweat flew and he lunged up with the mace, still held a shortened grip, and dropped the spike through the creature's jaw; the crunch of bones sending and involuntary shiver up Cousland's spine. The creature squirmed violently, blood streaming down from his nostrils and eyes, if one could even call them that, and Cousland shielded himself with this new prey, and shuffled head on into the throng of the horde, breathing and blowing as Darkspawn blades hacked their companion's arms off; thrusting out with his sword, chain mail scrapping on the steel as it pierced a gut and encountered spine. He twisted it back out, and sucked and blew, teeth gritted, and flung the broken, armless wretch at the charging feet of the next creature, which stumbled and fell into his elbows. Cousland lengthened the grip on his mace and coshed and kill the creature with a single blow, the flanges of the mace biting through the rear of the skull and dyeing the creature's armor a dark crimson.
Straighten up, breath and blow, shake the sweat. He wheezed. His chest was tight, his gorge scorched. He felt nauseous and weak. He was too far forward in the throng. Get back.
The Darkspawn horde shouldered one another in the frenzy to get through the choke point of the fort's entrance, their weapons constricted, one shield obstructing another. Spot the openings. Swallow the scalding bile. Kill him, kill them, kill them all. A blow glanced off his helm and hammered into his pauldron. Spike him in the privates, stab him in the neck. The creature fought on from his knees, blinded by the fountain from his arteries, still scrabbling with his blade for the joints in Cousland's plate. Cousland drove the finial through his temple and stepped back. Now back step again. Keep them at bay. He threw an upward sword cut to the thighs and a backstroke to the guts and a thrust to the chest, in deep and twist. Don't look in the eyes. The creature is done. And breathe; you fool, keep the knees loose, ignore the battle cries. Get back. Movement to the left - below - a face in the ditch, slash it in the eyes, forget the creature, face front, step back, here it comes, X-block, no room to swing, struggling face to chest, breath hot and sour, he's strong - oh yes? - pommel strike, open him up, cosh him on the shoulders, collapse his chest, die, die, stab him in the belly, and out, and again, and out, and some steel in the throat for the Archdemon, and step back - but over there, no, step back now, patience, breathe, shake the sweat, blow it off. Still too far down the causeway. Exposed. Ten seconds' rest. Or five. He had no choice.
He leaned on his sword and panted.
The first ten minutes of scaling the fort had passed, and he felt sick to the gut and drained. His body had already begun begging for the light refreshment and eight hours sleep. Where was the strength and wind he had once possessed in abundance? For the first time in almost two years, he was shaken. He'd never fought creatures so difficult to kill, so reluctance to die when they were already dead. These Darkspawn were maniacs and he was not - not any longer. The night stretched before him and he could not see its end. He was afraid, not of death, but merely of the effort in which it would take to achieve his goal. Yet, his second wind would come. He could feel it, buzzing deep in the bowels of his stomach and coursing through his veins. That, or a shared grave by the body of the Archdemon. To the clank and hiss of hammer and sword, Alistair Therein and Sten the Qunari drew level on the causeway, each soused from helm to greaves in sweat-speckled gore, their beards all matted and agleam, as if they'd drunk straight from a barrel of molasses.
Cousland roused his noble blood and his pride. He could not let himself be shammed by a tanned-skinned conqueror and a drop-out Chantry Templar. The three of them stood abreast at the mounting redoubt of corpses piled at their knees, and proceeded to impale the Darkspawn foremen as they scrambled over their dead. Over head, spells of every origins and imagination flew alongside arrows as the others did what they could to ease the carnage on their companions. Swift and cruel this warfare was, with bludgeon and spike and blade, and the Dwarven allies ventured up behind them with their hammers and axes and gave them some respite from the sheer weight of corrupted flesh barrel down upon them. The shower of Dalish arrows arched across the walls. Cousland and the others crouched with covered heads as the shower rained down death and injury from above; the Darkspawn stumbled in disarray. A violent spell from Morrigan had a majority of the creatures burning as flames bloomed yellow among them, causing only more panic. Those drenched in the burning jelly spell fled for anything that might relinquish their pain, but none was to be found. The comrades wove among the burning, slashing and cutting those who had not yet succumbed to the flames of their demise. A wave of brief relief washed over them, before yet another horde of Darkspawn swarmed the fort's gates.
"Back to back!" roared Alistair.
Sten's war hammer flashed and the pick sank up to the haft in a face and tore it half away. Cousland swiveled and the pauldrons of the three warriors clashed together. Shoulder to shoulder, in a circle of woe, they stood, and woe was all their assailants found to greet them. Like a band of cornered, starved Blight wolves, the comrades ravaged and butchered all that stirred within reach, hostile blows ringing from their harness as they were forced to give up what little ground they'd won, overwhelmed by the horde's sheer force and numbers, and reluctantly shuffled back through the flames towards the line, and the rest of their companions; their footing unsteady on the smoldering mattress of the mutilated and slain and dying.
The dense smell of roasting meat was repulsively appetizing, and Cousland's mouth filled with juices. A genlock ran himself through on the point of Cousland's sword, and with such frenzy did he come that his chest hammered hard into the quillions. Cousland spiked the squalling creature in the head with the finial and like a farmer pitching a wheat blade he hefted the creature aside, and a slash came at his head and Cousland parried with the mace haft and he chopped his blade into legs as hard as cedar. The creature dropped to his knees, and Cousland worked his sword down into its chest, and an uncontrollable nausea exploded up his gullet and his mace dangled by its wrist loop, and his doubled up over the sword, with both hands gripped the cross guard, and he vomited a torrent of gall and phlegm into the dying creature's screaming face. Cousland clutched his watering eyes, the gastric spasm shunting the blade deeper. He leaned on the hilt until the fit had passed, then he spat and hauled his blade free, and kicked the corpse aside, and blinked and shook his head, and sweat and mucus flew; through the blur he saw two well-armored heads bearing down the causeway of the fort towards him. He braced himself to take their blows, when a scalloped blade whistled by, and both heads vanished, the skulls splintering apart in a bloody collage of eyeballs and brains and liquid ropes. A gaping gorge and, from his eye's corner, he saw Alistair wrangle in the huge two-handed weapons and plant its point into a third head as it bobbed up from a nearby ditch.
Alistair paused, his mouth heaving wide in his blood-covered face. "I asked you to watch my back."
Cousland also battled to catch his breath. "It would seem I'm still not fighting it," he admitted.
There was a lull in the assault and the three men fell abreast and they bludgeoned and stabbed those wounded within reach, and then they rested, and for a moment the causeway boasted no life standing but their own. They talked of home, and warm food, and rest and the Archdemon. Soon, they were forced to regain their line and assume their stations. Cousland felt improved. The purge of his stomach had done him good. As he spat out the sour residue his eyes caught a tub of bread and wine shunting by. He cradled his sword in his elbow and stooped and shoveled up a gauntlet of mush and slacked it down his throat in one. It was marvelous. Sweet and salty all at once. With a hint of rosemary? He called Alistair and pointed to the slowly disappearing vat. Alistair bent down and helped himself readily. Cousland turned back to the shambles and recruited his spirit.
Thus, the second ten minutes had passed, or so he guessed. His body left limber, his chest as sound as a drum. His mind was crystal clear. He had gained his second wind. He rolled his shoulders and loosened his hips and settled down to meet what was yet to come. It could only get worse, but he was up for it. A fresh wave of fanatical Darkspawn foamed from the darkness towards the causeway. He blew out his breath and took a deeper one. As the champions of all of Ferelden and the Grey Wardens braced themselves, Alistair fetched up alongside him smacking his lips. He caught Cousland's look.
"Well?" said Alistair.
Cousland clapped him on the back and smiled and said, "Glory."
End.
Author's Note: This short glimpse into the life of my Grey Warden, Aldéric Cousland, was inspired by pp. 278 – 282 of Tim Willock's amazing, heart-racing modern classic, The Religion, an amazing historical-fiction chronicling The Order of the Knights of St. John, the Fall of Fort St. Elmo, the Ottoman invasion of the Isle of Malta, and one man's journey to find a boy whose name he does not know and whose face he has never seen and pluck him from the throngs of the most spectacular siege in military history.