Fouler language than usual.
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11. No Drowning Mark
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GONZALO
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I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he
hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is
perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his
hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable,
for our own doth little advantage. If he be not
born to be hanged, our case is miserable.
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-Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I Scene I
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Redcliff Village
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Tabris:
The breeze off Lake Calenhad smells like dead men, rot, and fear, but it's still better than the odour of wound-fever and confinement inside the Chantry. Kallian invokes Teagan's name and authority with reckless abandon, trusting the bann has judged rightly in thinking his people will take aid from an elf. He has: the stocky mayor squints at her suspiciously, but settles once it's clear she knows her business.
Barricades. She snorts to herself. Every elf in Denerim knows barricades, when hardly a summer goes by without a riot. "Sten is taking a look at the approaches," she says to Murdock's worried gaze, twining her fingers in Reaver's wiry ruff to keep them from closing around her sword. Nerves. She's not at ease around the shem, and she can't afford to let it show. The mabari makes a soft noise in his throat and leans his giant head against her thigh. Good dog. "If there's anything more that can be done, he'll spot it."
The Sten of the Beresaad does not lie, as far as she can tell. I know war, he said in his cage in Lothering. And war he knows. Small company combat, at least: his silent competence is encouraging, and he does not stint his knowledge when she asks.
"I don't trust qunari," Ser Perth mutters, scratching his jaw with blunt fingernails. She ignores him. It's not really a protest, just a way for him to voice his apprehension without admitting it. They're all afraid. So is she, but she has more to fear than familiar corpses that don't know when to lie down.
Sten to the approaches, and Morrigan, raven-formed, to scout - cautiously - the keep on the bluff. Information wins battles, logistics wins wars. That's something Leliana said, startlingly enough: the Chantry sister has hidden depths behind her cheerful not-quite-all-there facade. She and Alistair are helping haul timber for the barricades: hot, dirty work, but needful.
Which leaves her to lean over a crude plan of the village spread over a splintering barrel-top, ankle-deep in mud beside Murdock, Ser Perth and Harrith, and make sure they're all fighting from the same page. The weak afternoon sunlight fades the ink-drawn lines, and the breeze flips the edges of the parchment.
Perth's knights - all five of them, and that's including, she knows, the squire who inherited his master's arms this morning - and two-thirds of Murdock's militia will be on the approach to the keep. The rest of the militia will man the barricades around the Chantry house, with Harrith's four templars as a last-ditch reserve. "I don't see any way around it," she says, and sighs. "Knight-Commander, I'm leaving Morrigan with you. She's a match for any three men in a fight, and better at distance work than an archer, so I don't want to hear any shit from your templar brothers about apostates, understand?"
"I understand." Harrith's tenor is surprisingly light for a man of his bulk, and his lip curls in a smile in the shadow of his stubble. "I'll make sure they manage to forget she's a mage at all. I take it you'll be on the bluff?"
"Leliana will stay with the archers." She rubs her forehead. "But Alistair, Sten and I will take the front line, yes. If we form the centre of the militia's line, while Ser Perth anchors the left, that puts the right up against a cliff. I think we can hold there for a time, and manage a fighting retreat down to the village if necessary." I think. I hope. "What do you think, Ser Perth?"
"That's probably the best use of our resources," the knight agrees, tiredly. "Maker send it is enough, Warden."
"It will be." From somewhere she dredges up a grin. "Alistair and I survived Ostagar, gentlemen. After a darkspawn horde, a few knock-kneed corpses should be simple."
Reaver barks agreement, and Murdock manages a smile.
"Hey, Murdock!" The mayor's folding up the map when the shout comes from the barricades. The militia teams have stopped hauling and hammering for a water break, and there's an ugly expression on one man's square, red face. "You really think some knife-eared whore can save us?"
Beside him, another man - big, blond, filthy - snorts. "Maybe he thinks she's gonna save his prick, Dag."
The first man grabs at his crotch. His grin's a rictus. "Save me, Warden Knife-Ear!"
Frightened men, doing what frightened men do.
"They're loudmouths, Warden." Murdock shrugs an apology. "Trying to stop them would only make them worse." But his eyes slide aside from her glance, and her mouth tightens.
"I understand," she says, quietly, and turns away. Best to look over the ground once more with her own eyes than to waste time contesting what little authority she has -
"You insult her," a very familiar, very angry voice says loudly, "and you insult all the Grey Wardens. You don't want to do that, do you?"
"Alistair!" Naked sword, naked anger, and the militia reaching for their weapons. Not good for any of them. Kallian puts a crack into her voice. "Alistair, with me."
"But he -"
"Now," she grinds out, feeling the moment's tension humming in her veins. One wrong word, one wrong flinch, and the only way this ends will be in blood.
And Leliana - blessed Leliana - lays a hand on his swordarm and murmurs something low-voiced and urgent. He rams his sword home into its scabbard, an angry red suffusing his features. But he comes, Leliana trailing him worriedly.
"Kallian -"
She jerks her head towards the shoreline, cuts him off. "Walk with me, Alistair." Cold and very calm: "You too, Leliana, if you will."
At the water's edge they are out of earshot of anyone save insects and the water-rat that rustles the reeds as they pass. The light ripples from the water, and tiny wavelets lip the stones. A faint haze obscures the horizon. Very quietly, Kallian says, "You realise, Alistair, that just now you could have caused us a disaster?"
"But he called you -"
"I know what he called me." He might be her age in years, but in many ways he's so damn young it breaks her heart. The alienage - her mother's death, her own arrest for theft, everything that followed - gave her a charred ruin of a childhood. A jaundiced view of the world. She meets his wounded brown eyes steadily. "Do you imagine it's the first time I've heard it?"
"But -" He worries his lower lip. "Doesn't it make you, I don't know, angry?"
"Angry?" Her laugh is a bitter bark. "Do I have a right to be angry at the truth, Alistair? I've sold my body for coin or food more than once. I grew up in the alienage. Nearly everyone over the age of twelve has, one time or another. Even if I hadn't, to men like him, that's all I am. Just another knife-eared bitch from the gutter." Her lips tighten. "And attacking him over it will only make it harder to do our jobs here, Alistair. It's hard to defend anything if you're imitating a pincushion, or didn't you notice the archers?"
"They would have killed you, Alistair," Leliana adds, seriously. Kallian acknowledges her support with a nod. Their eyes meet, and there is an understanding darkness in the Orlesian's gaze. Unexpected depths. "Truly. That... man is one of their own, and we are the outsiders here, yes?"
"Right." He has a mulish expression. "I still don't think it's right."
"It's the way of the world, Alistair." She exhales through her teeth. "Worry about it after we survive the night. Right now, we have a job to do. And we need to get it done."
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That ran longer than I expected. Any votes for what to do next, and from whose POV?
