8. ORLAIS: A RUINED KEEP

"Trap—right ahead!" Leliana called out.

I pulled hard on my horse's reins to bring him to a stop. "What? On the road?"

Leliana shook her head and pointed, "Up there, along that path." It was late afternoon and we had ridden almost halfway back to Coteaux du Roche when she called out a warning that had once been as familiar as the color rising in Alistair's cheeks. The road turned sharply just ahead of us to avoid going over a steep hill, but a narrow trail wound in between the trees up the hillside.

She dismounted from her horse to investigate.

"Be careful," I said, unnecessarily. She moved forward and disappeared from view into the shadows of the trees.

She re-emerged from the shade a short time later. "The trap has already been sprung—some sort of a net. There was a fight there, bloodstains on the ground. No one is nearby right now, though. Come look."

I accepted Leliana's assurance that we were alone—she was never wrong about such things. We tied our horses to cypress trees by the roadside and carefully followed the path.

"A horse left the road here," she said quietly, indicating the horseshoe prints in the dirt. "Do you think…could these be from Alistair's horse?"

I stared at the ground and sighed. "I don't know. It's a big horse so it could be…but I am afraid I never studied the hoofprints he left behind." I concentrated hard casting my awareness as far as I could but could sense no sign of the taint.

A short distance up the path, hidden from the road by the first twist through the woods, a torn and bloodstained net hung between the trees. Leliana inspected the ground. "The trigger rope was here, just before the bend, but the net fell here. The…captive must have cut his way out of the net and put up a fight." She studied the path beyond the net. "Several bodies were dragged in this direction," she said softly.

The path forked ahead and Leliana studied the tracks in the dirt with a perplexed look. Then she nodded to herself. "One was pulled further up the trail, while the others were taken this way along the base of the hill." She peered into the shade of the trees. "Is that a mound of dirt?"

We moved along the path to find not one but three fresh mounds of disturbed earth. Whoever was buried here could have been lain to rest only a few days ago. My vision blurred with tears. Alistair? Could it really have come to an end like this?

"Aedan, do not despair…we don't even know if he was ever here. Let us investigate what's further up the hill. Trust in the Maker."

I wrenched myself away from the graves and followed Leliana up the hill, both of us moving with the utmost care. Anyone watching would have seen only a flickering of shadow where we passed. About halfway up the hill, I sensed that familiar corruption, faint, but unmistakeable. I exhaled in relief. "Leli," I breathed. "He's here…he's alive!" Or another Warden was, perhaps, but I felt sure. Maybe I was imagining it, but somehow I felt there was something familiar about this one presence.

"They must have buried their fallen fellows and brought him up here as a captive. He was hurt," she said, looking at the blood mixed with the dirt where he had been dragged along the path. "Can you pinpoint his location?"

I shook my head. "No, it doesn't work like that. We must be closer to him here than on the road, though. Let's keep going up the hill.

As we approached the hilltop, a ruined keep with a curtain wall and tower came into view. It was built of the same pale grey, porous stone that is common around Lake Calenhad, and overgrown with ivy. It looked old enough to date back to before Andraste's Exalted March against the Imperium.

Leliana whispered, "I'm going to climb this tree and see if I can get a better view." She clambered up an oak tree, thick-trunked and gnarled enough to have been planted when the keep was built. She returned after a few moments. "There is a lookout standing in the tower. I think I can get a clear shot on him, if I climb high enough in the tree."

Leliana was the best archer I had ever known. Given a place of concealment and enough time to aim, she could fell almost anyone—or anything—with a single arrow. I silently offered a prayer to the Maker and watched the keep from the dense shade of the tree while I waited. She loaded the bow we had taken from Marjolaine's house, carefully pulled it back and let loose her arrow. "Got him, " she whispered. "I don't think there's anyone else outside the walls of the fort, so we should be able to approach unseen."

As we moved out of the cover of the woods and made our way toward the walls, I could sense the taint more clearly. "He's here…"

Leliana closed her eyes and concentrated. "There are five people inside the courtyard...no, six. Let me see if I can find a way up to the tower—that should give me a good vantage point. When you make your move, I'll fire a scattershot to give you cover.

"Sounds like a plan." Two against five was not promising odds, but Leli and I had faced worse in the past. As Leliana made her way to the tower, I crept to an area where the wall had partially crumbled to ruin and peered over it.

On close inspection, the keep itself had nearly collapsed and the brigands had doubtless judged it too unstable to use. Instead, the five of them had made their campsite in the courtyard and sat roughly in a circle around a fire in its center. Alistair lay bound in ropes and completely unconscious near the western wall, opposite the tower. For once, I was thankful for the taint. Had it not been for the corruption in his blood and mine, I would have thought him dead. He had been stripped of his possessions; I could see the Keening Blade holstered at the belt of a woman in leather armor with long brown hair. Fury rose in me.

"Have we heard anything back from the Wardens?" asked the woman.

"Nah," said the man seated beside her. "They acted like they didn't know whose shield it was, though they took it."

"Impossible. Look at this gear—and the way the bugger fought—he's got to be somebody important."

A third man spoke up from the other side of the fire, nearest Alistair. "They're probably organizing an expedition to kill us all", he added gloomily. "Let's just kill him, sell his stuff and get out of here."

"We won't get anywhere near what this stuff is worth from a fence. They'll have to melt it down or sell it in Antiva or Tevinter—it's too recognizable to risk trying to sell around here. A guy like this has gotta be worth more than a suit of mail to somebody."

"Maybe not, if he doesn't wake up," said the first man.

"I tell you, he's gonna come round. Maybe when we know who he is, we'll be able to get a ransom. But why would he have a warden symbol on his shield if he's not from Coteaux du Roche? Who would impersonate a Warden? Unless it's a game…"

As they talked, I moved around the wall to my left. I wanted to come from that side, to get myself between them and Alistair, in case anybody got the idea of using him against me. If I moved quietly, the long shadows cast by the late afternoon sun would hide me from view…as long as I didn't get noticed as I came over the wall. When I got into position, I scaled the wall, slid between the battlements and dropped down the other side. I took a deep breath, drew my daggers and applied Zevran's poison to them before making my move.

As I moved past Alistair, toward the man who had wanted to kill him, Leliana released her shattering shot. One of the men yelped as Leliana's shot struck his right shoulder and the fragments flew into the others, wounding them in various places. Taking advantage of the confusion, I pressed forward and killed the man nearest me with a flurry of daggers in his back. As he fell lifeless, the others had grabbed their weapons and were ready to fight.

"I'll go after the archer, while you handle this one," called the man who had been seated next to the woman as he raced across the courtyard, holding a shield up to counter the arrows Leliana was letting fly from the tower. The other three came after me. The woman came at me from my right with the keening blade in one hand and a dagger in her right. I would want to avoid being struck by Alistair's sword above all—being paralyzed even briefly would surely be fatal. Two men also came at me, one clad in light mail with a broadsword and shield, and the wounded one with two daggers. It didn't look like he would be able to do much with the one in his right, though—Leliana's arrow had injured him badly.

As the three of them advanced on me, I darted forward and made two swift, sweeping cuts in front of me, scoring on two of them—not the woman, though, who appeared to be the most skilled of the lot. I then pulled back, narrowly dancing away from the keening blade, while blocking the mailed man's sword thrust with the dagger in my left hand.

I made a quick feint toward the woman, then stabbed the man with the wounded shoulder in the gut. He fell and I yanked my dagger out of his belly and pulled away, ducking beneath the swinging sword of the man in mail and desperately deflecting the keening blade with my right hand.

When fighting opponents with longer weapons, you inevitably are drawn into a dart forward, pull back style that tends to cause you to yield ground over time. I was becoming conscious of the wall not far behind me; Alistair lay close by me on the ground to my right. While that would make it difficult for either foe to get behind me, it also restricted my mobility. I could not tell how Leliana was faring—she did not appear to be on top of the tower any more.

The woman moved in on me now with a series of quick, punishing blows. I parried two blows from the keening blade, but she caught me in the side with her dagger. I was not sure how badly I was hit, but the pain was sharp. Wincing, I forced a riposte that merely grazed her chin—I had been aiming for her throat. But with satisfaction, I noted the glazed look in her eyes, an indication that Zevran's poison was taking effect. For a short time, she would be dazed and ineffective.

I returned my attention to the man, just in time to see his shield flying toward my head. I twisted away and it struck my left shoulder—hard—knocking me off my feet. My head struck the wall behind me and I slid to the ground, stunned. He loomed over me, readying his sword for the coup de grace. I had failed. I turned my head away from that blow, seeking one last look at Alistair.