Chapter Eighteen: The Murder of Crows

Dawn's dying wisps clung to the hazy light of morning like a gossamer shroud as the party broke camp. They had travelled the road up to Lake Calahad well into the night after leaving Redcliffe castle in search of mages to enter the Fade and free Connor from the demon and even knowing they were doing the right thing. (The only thing to save everyone in the Guerrin family) Alistair was still torn with worry and anxious to get moving as swiftly as possible this day. There was no real knowing how Redcliffe would fare in their absence, or whether the demon possessing Connor would gain the strength to lay siege to the village again. The thought that people might start dying again while they were travelling to the Circle weighed heavily on Alistair; thought not as much as the thought of having to kill Connor or Isolde. Still despite his fears for his childhood home and the family that had never been his, Alistair's primary worry was for Mahahlia. She had been listless and disturbingly quiet since before the battle to save Redcliffe village.

Alistair was not quite so foolish that he didn't realise that Mahahlia was annoyed with him; he probably should have done more to help prepare the village of Redcliffe for the night siege. In fact, he knew deep down, that he should have taken the lead in all those efforts instead of leaving it to Mahahlia, a Dalish elf who had probably never spent so much time in a human town before. Still Alistair wasn't sure what he should do about that now. Anytime he tried to approach the elf she glared at him like she was imagining what he'd look like with all his skin flayed off.

Marching along the long road back to the small hamlet of Kinlock Hold and the Circle tower, following the curvature of Lake Calahad close enough that the damp from the river fog seeped into their bones, Alistair kept a covert eye on his fellow Grey Warden. Her footfalls seemed heavy and graceless, which was completely unlike her. She walked with her head down, barely aware of her own surroundings. Not good; that was not good at all.

'Alistair?' Startled out of his pensive reverie Alistair was surprised to see that Leliana had come up beside him.

'Wow,' he eyed the Chantry sister warily. 'Can't you make noise when you walk or something?'

Leliana only managed a faint smile in response to this, 'Minstrels must stay light on our feet, yes?' Her bright eyes fixed on Mahahlia's slumped form a few steps ahead and the smile slid away.

'I'm worried too.' Alistair admitted without Leliana having to say a word. 'Mahahlia isn't usually this quiet.'

'She is tired.' The Orlesian said firmly. 'This is very hard on her, Alistair. She is far from her home.' The woman gave him a look, 'We must all help to lessen the burden on her, yes? She is our leader, but a leader is cannot do everything on her own.'

Alistair winced, 'I know,' he shifted uncomfortably in his armour. 'It's just that, despite you know, everything, she's actually pretty good at leading. People listen to what she says, even when she's not threatening to chop their arms and legs off.'

Leliana smiled, an odd shine in her eyes, 'Yes. She is like a hero from the old songs. She is a leader of men. Still,' the slightly strange Chantry sister grew pensive again. 'We are all her friends, yes? We must make things easier for her when we can.' The redhead woman sighed. 'I think she is lonely. She is far from her own kind and the human ways of Ferelden, I think, are very strange to her.'

Alistair was about to say something, anything at all, in response but then the sound of a woman shrieking shattered the grey and dull morning. Instantly weapons were drawn and staves poised as their party of five fell into immediate battle readiness. A young woman in homespun clothes hurtled towards them, stumbling to her knees as she tripped over her feet, still looking behind her shoulder in abject terror.

'Bandits!' She reached to grasp at one of Alistair's greaves, 'Ahead – destroyed our wagons; killed our guard. Maker please, I beg you, help us!' As if to further illustrate the point the acrid stench of smoke began to taint the air. The woman on the ground was bloody and covered in dust; her face blushing with fresh bruises and her clothes torn.

Alistair narrowed his eyes, looking to the point further up the empty road where the smoke rose from in lazy lines. 'Stay here.' He ordered the frightened woman as he buckled on his shield to his left arm and took up his sword in his right hand. He started running along the path, Lethallin bounding up to keep pace easily beside him. He could hear the others at his heels, Leliana and Morrigan maintaining their rearguard. Moments later Mahahlia was on his other side, swift footed and able even though her strides were shorter as they charged forward.

Therefore when they ran into the wide spot in the road where an overturned wagon stood burning, and the blood of the oxen that had pulled the wagon was already trying in the morning sunlight, Alistair, Lethallin, and Mahahlia were a good few yards ahead of the other two members of the party. Alistair had a scant second to realise something was very wrong before the massive bulk of a felled tree crashed down from the cliff rise above them, on a collision course with their heads.

Alistair, Lethallin and Mahahlia dived one way, Leliana (the closest of the other two) leapt back the other way. They all hit the ground as from all sides along the rocky ridge above them and the tree line at the road side, a wall of arrows rained down upon them. Alistair spat road dust out of his mouth and rolled to his feet. He swiftly raised his shield and felt the impact run up his arm as a trio of arrows bit into the metal.

'Maker's breath!' These bandits were good; they'd set an ambush! Running forward with his shield before him Alistair ploughed straight into one of the bandits as he emerged from cover behind a tree and launched a spiralling two bladed attack straight at Mahahlia, who was still picking herself up from underneath some of the heavier tree branches.

Smashing into the attacker with shield and brute strength Alistair sent the man bouncing across the ground, face a mass of blood. He whipped up his shield again and deflected another barrage of arrows. Who were these brigands? They were better than the usual roadside bandits they had encountered once or twice in the last few months. Beyond the bulk of the fallen tree Alistair could hear the crackle and pop of smells searing the air and Leliana's unique battle cry mingling with Lethallin's howls.

Another duel wielding man leapt off the ridge above them then, Alistair dodged out of the way, putting himself between the new assailant and Mahahlia who had yet to stand. He stopped the other man from flanking him and used his shield to knock him senseless as soon as the man closed in on him. Deflecting yet more arrows (though there seemed to be fewer now – the others must have been doing some good beyond the tree) Alistair started forward to help Mahahlia. There was no warning for what happened next.

One moment he was moving to lift his fellow Grey Warden out from under the fallen tree branches, the next he was crumpled on the ground by the roadside, grasping at the flaring red and blinding pain emanating from one leg. Astonished Alistair realised he'd been hamstrung from behind by an assailant he hadn't even realised was there.

Sensing movement though he still couldn't see anyone Alistair whipped his shield up and around to protect his head, holding it facing the direction he expected the next blow to come from. Unfortunately he was then promptly kicked in the back of the head from the other direction, his assailant somehow having managed to sneak around him once again. Thus it was that Alistair slammed face first into the dust for a second time – and this time he did not get back up.

******

Mahahlia had seen Alistair fall. It had all happened so fast! First the ambush, which had left the three frontline fighters cut off from their mage and archer support. Second had been the weight of the felled tree's stout branch batting her to the hard ground and knocking the wind out of her. Still struggling to extricate herself from under the tree Mahahlia had been helpless to do more than watch as one of their attackers leapt at her, brandishing twin blades longer than her forearm in a lethal blur. Alistair's timely intervention had undoubtedly saved her life (a thought to chew on later - assuming there was one) but now it seemed he needed her aid.

Finally free of the tree Mahahlia leapt to her feet and charged the yellow haired man, the one who had appeared from nowhere to cripple and then kick Alistair unconscious; it was only when the man pivoted smoothly to parry her rather clumsy vertical stab with dar'misu that Mahahlia realised to her shock that the attacker was of the elvhenen. She hesitated; shocked. In all this time the only elves she had seen living amid the shem had been pathetic, weak, and crawling creatures, barely deserving to be called elves. Other than the Dalish of Zathrian's clan she had yet to see another elf bearing arms until this man. The incongruity of the sight shocked her into a devastating moment of inattentiveness. She stared into a pair of elven eyes as dark and empty as an abyss.

'Grey warden, you die here.'

Shock turned to heart hammering fear as Mahahlia realised that this man knew what she was, and while still frozen by the surprise of it all, the elf seized the opportunity and kicked her in the knee cap. Simultaneously, as she began to crumple to the ground, he caught one of her wrists in a vicious twist that caused her fingers to grow instantly limp around her own weapon so that it fell from her hand. Using her lack of balance and the grip he had on her arm, the man spun her around, so her back was to his chest, wrapped one sinewy forearm tight under her chin and hissed in her ear in a strange and oddly sinister tenor.

'Tsk, such poor blade control; so sloppy; it is such a shame.' The arm left her throat but before she could react the elf withdrew like a shadow. Mahahlia whipped around, panting and clutching her still remaining dar'misu. She could not see hide nor hair of the elf, but she did see Alistair, unable to stand, struggling to hold his shield before him as the very same shem woman who had accosted them earlier, screaming of bandits, threw bolts of lightning straight at his head.

'Morrigan! Leliana!' Mahahlia ran in a crouch along the bluff in a wide arc around the aggressor mage. She could hear Lethallin snarling and barking a little ways off. Yet where were the others? Alistair was clearly incapacitated and unable to defend himself but why had the others not come to their aid; the thought that they had been felled already simply served to spur Mahahlia on faster than before.

As she mounted the small ridge behind the enemy mage Mahahlia soon discovered that Morrigan and Leliana, while both still fighting, had their hands full dealing with a small battalion of archers and melee fighters. Morrigan had taken her giant spider form and was busy half devouring one such rogue while Leliana managed to loose a barrage of covering fire against any archers who might have tried to pick off Mahahlia as she lunged for the inattentive deceiver who had led them into this ambush. Alistair was still just about staying upright, but he still couldn't stand.

The enemy mage realised her vulnerability too late, spinning around with arms raised for casting only for her hands to drop and her mouth to fall open in shock as Mahahlia buried her dar'misu deep into the woman's gut. She dragged the blade upward until she hit bone and then twisted savagely left and right. The woman was dead before she fell down over the edge of the bluff. Mahahlia did not bother to watch her hit the bottom and instead turned her sights outward.

Recovering from the initial surprise of the attack she was pleased to see that her compatriots were beginning to gain the upper hand. Morrigan had shifted into her swarm form and had caught a knot of archers in a veritable wall of biting, stinging, buzzing death. While the men cried out and tried to run or fight off the swarm, Leliana picked them off with one keen arrow after another. When one straggler bolted for higher ground away from the road, Lethallin launched himself at the man's back, jaws snapping his neck before they hit the ground. Blood arced in the air as the mabari worried at his prey, tearing open weak flesh.

Mahahlia had a moment more to feel triumphant and bask in reflective pride, before the fight found her again. The hair on the nape of her neck lifted all aquiver a second later and shiver ran down her spine. Mahahlia was spinning on her feet, one surviving blade sweeping in a wide arc towards the male elf's throat in the next instance.

'Pity,' the elf laughed jumping backward away from the lunge. 'It would appear that one cannot buy good help in this miserable country.' Mahahlia tried a shot to his side where leather armour was weaker. The elf sidestepped easily, not even losing the train of his conversation. 'I had hoped my new friends would kill at least one of you.'

The elf feinted rather obviously with the dagger in his left hand, but Mahahlia recognised the move and stepped inward instead of outward and very nearly managed to get a hit in of her own before he danced away again. Native anger getting the better of what limited combat tactics she owned, Mahahlia drove at her assailant in a fury; undisciplined but magnificent in the pure rage that animated her every thrust, sweep, kick, and stab.

'Marvellous; such passion! I could watch you exert yourself all day.' The elf laughed; a sound at once joyous and harsh. He was bleeding from one or two shallow nicks, but remained infuriatingly alive despite Mahahlia's increasingly frantic efforts. 'Alas it would appear I must do this the hard way.'

Distantly Mahahlia realised that the elf was leading her away from the relative safety of the road and her other companions, towards a copse of trees deep in shadow. When she tried to turn away, to retreat and make him force the attack so she could lure him to her compatriots, the elf managed somehow to outmanoeuvre her once again, sliding past her guard so he stood between her and the road. A second later Mahahlia was stumbling backwards into the trees to avoid the spearing thrust of a shortsword aimed at her throat.

Screaming her rage she threw what little finesse and caution she possessed to the wind and charged the elf as if he was an ogre, her one dagger held above her head ready to plunge downward with all her might. The abyssal eyed elf laughed again like shattering glass and did not move until she had committed herself to the downward sweep, then he twisted at the last instant (so much so that her dar'misu grazed his ribs on the pass), grabbed the back of her head in one hand and her wrist in the other and used her own momentum to force her too far forward and off balance. She hit the ground, dagger striking into hard packed ground and near breaking her wrist with the impact as the weight of the rest of her body fell upon her hand. Mahahlia screamed again – a short, sharp sound.

It was with her heart in her throat that she realised that this was the moment of her death.

Except it wasn't; the fatal stab to the back did not come, nor the quick blade across the throat from behind. Instead Mahahlia swiftly rolled over kicking to her feet and staggered upright. She stared at the strange elf who had not taken his opportunity to kill her. Standing a few feet away he merely smiled leeringly at her, nodded shallowly in a mocking bow and gestured with his drawn swords.

'Your move senora.'

Mahahlia did not hesitate. She could not fathom why the man would not press his attack and she did not intend to waste any more time wondering. He was a mad fool and she did not intend to give him any other opportunity to kill her. Once more throwing herself forward, Mahahlia skirted nimbly to the right at the last second, catching the man by surprise. He only just managed to turn so that a strike to the kidney caught him in the hip instead; she felt it when her blade hit the bone. She heard him hiss in pain, those dead eyes narrowing to angry slits.

'You learn quickly. That is good.' He murmured as they parted and circled each other. Mahahlia frowned. She did not understand why this man kept talking in the middle of a fight to the death, but more than that she wondered at what he said. If he had come to kill her shouldn't he be killing her and not complimenting her?

Once again her confusion cost Mahahlia dearly, as suddenly, the man was in motion. Taking a leaf from her own unorthodox technique he charged her head on, catching her with his shoulder and slamming her backwards into the trunk of a tree. Mahahlia saw stars in daylight as once again all the breath whooshed from her lungs and the back of her skull bounced against hard bark. She tried to thrust the dar'misu pinned between his body and hers into his stomach, but he moved and brought his own hand down in a chopping motion against her shoulder in just such a way that all the muscles and tendons of her arm from shoulder to fingertip turned to water. The blade dropped uselessly to the scraggy grass at her feet.

'Ah and here we are.' The elf whispered in her ear and Mahahlia could barely hear him over the terrible thundering of her heart. 'Our dance is at its end, si?'

Sweat stung Mahahlia's eyes and she could barely see for the dancing spots of panic obscuring her vision. The strange elf's smell filled her nostrils and in a moment of extreme weakness Mahahlia closed her eyes, afraid to look the instant of her death in the eye. Then once again the nameless elf did something inexplicable. She felt him grab one of her hands and shove his own shortsword into her sweaty palm. Mahahlia's eyes popped open at once. The elf leaned in towards her and whispered something into her ear in a tongue she did not understand, except to catch one word:

'……Rinna.'

He sprang back from her then and let his own dagger fall from his hands, while Mahahlia watched, dumbfounded. The elf smirked humourlessly and lifted his arms loosely away from his body and out to the side. His pose seemed to invite a lunge straight for the vulnerable flesh of neck or stomach. Thus he stood there, open and waiting for the blow, empty eyes closed and face composed. Mahahlia tightened her grip on the unfamiliar sword he had pushed into her hand and pushed away from the tree. She was wary and did not trust this newest and most peculiar gambit.

'Who are you?' She demanded trying to sound anything other than breathless and afraid.

The elf did not answer, just sighed and held his waiting pose. He had an air about him of one impatient for death. Mahahlia was completely stunned. She did not understand any of this! This made twice now that the elf had foresworn an open opportunity to kill her. She was about to speak again, to demand answers, when a large dark sharp exploded from the underbrush in the shadows under the trees. There was a snarl from nightmares, a flash of teeth, and before Mahahlia's eyes her mabari threw himself atop the inexplicable elf.

'Lethallin – No!'

Dog and strange elf skidded across the balding grass of the road side. Lethallin riding the elf in a blur of snarling ferocity; Mahahlia saw blood fly, heard bone break, but not once did the elf make a sound as her faithful hound shook him like a hare dangling from his monstrous jaws. Mahahlia was in motion before she had time to think.

'Lethallin let go! LET GO!' Wrapping her arms around the great hound's neck, feeling muscle hard as rock pulse beneath sweat slick velvet fur, she pulled the mabari off the limp body of the other elf. To her even greater astonishment he was still just barely conscious -and smiling!

'Ah of course,' lying on the ground, his side torn open by her mabari's claws, his right shoulder nothing more than a red ruin, his face covered in his own blood and liberally slimed in drool the insane elf still contrived to leer at her. 'There would have to be a dog.' The elf's chuckle was wet with blood gurgling up from his throat and his eyes, still dead as a starless night, slipped almost languidly closed as the man slumped into deep unconsciousness.

Mahahlia, arms wrapped around her still snarling hound in a strange parody of an embrace, could do nothing except kneel beside the fallen elf in stunned incomprehension. She was still sitting just so when the rest of her party found her.