25. Elephants and Tyrants, Oh My!
Alistair and Jesse marshaled every resource Jesse knew of for the upcoming battle. They reinforced the walls and added oils to them so that they could use a basic burning oil defense. They put more ammunition within close reach of the mounted wall guns, one of which was in sorry shape—over a hundred years had taken its toll on it, even in storage. The handle had deteriorated to the point where it turned to powder at a touch. Alistair found a way to wrap it in leather, resulting in an hour-long conversation with the blacksmith.
Eventually, the work was done, and news had come in that the Darkspawn were definitely on the way. There was no news of Loghain, but Alistair remained skeptical, despite Jesse's cheerful certainty that they'd know if he was coming, so obviously he wasn't.
But the reports of Darkspawn activity grew increasingly worrisome. There was some sort of "massive something" with the crowd of Darkspawn coming their way. They were moving over the land rather than under it—disturbing enough in itself. But there was this "gigantic beast" that the scouts kept reporting that had Alistair on edge.
Finally, Sherry asked him point-blank what was bothering him, and he told her. She was much improved, and got better every day. But the wound on her chest kept her confined to her house. He was glad she was up and making her own shakes, but he could tell she was chafing at not leaving her house.
He'd spent the night with her all three nights since the first, but he simply couldn't sleep. With her so near, he found sleep nearly impossible. She was also a very restless sleeper, rolling over constantly and shifting in her sleep. Every night it got worse as her wound improved and restricted her less and less.
"They're on the approach. We'll be able to see them in a couple of hours, using binoculars."
He whirled to find her walking up behind him. She moved slowly, obviously in pain, but she looked cheerful, even anticipatory.
"You just can't stop yourself, can you?" he asked her, amused that she'd left the house despite both Wynne and the physician adamantly telling her to stay inside it.
She sobered and looked at him with a direct, penetrating gaze that made him shift and squirm. "They are my responsibility." As she said it, her hand encompassed the compound. "I've neglected them too long already."
She held a black device in her hands, and he wondered what new surprise was to come. Usually, when she was holding something unfamiliar, something exploded, someone died, loud noises gave him a headache, or various other uncomfortable sorts of mayhem went on. Whatever happened, he was sure it was a sign of bad things to come. 'Technology' had become a four-letter word to him.
As if she'd read his mind, she laughed. "Relax, Alistair. It's just binoculars, not a machine gun this time."
He grinned sheepishly, and helped her up the ladder to the top of the wall. He watched as the breeze lifted her hair and swirled it around her face. He remembered the first time he saw her, and thinking she wasn't particularly beautiful, more like interesting. What had he been thinking, he wondered?
She lifted the binoculars to her face and began sweeping them back and forth. "There!" she pointed randomly in the direction she seemed to be looking. "Here, take a look."
She offered him the black device and he waved it away. She chuckled.
"Don't worry, Alistair, it's harmless."
He sighed and took them, pressing them against his face. For a moment, he saw inside only blurry green and gray. She adjusted something on them and suddenly there were Darkspawn directly in front of him. Yelping, he grabbed his sword and nearly fell backwards off of the wall.
"Whoa, easy! They're miles away still!" She calmed him, though he still felt as if his heart would burst from his chest.
Pulling them away, he compared the two views. "They're not that harmless if they give me a heart attack," he answered. "I think I almost wet myself."
She giggled, but obviously tried to control herself when he gave her a dirty look. She fought the grin that was clearly winning, and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't think to warn you."
"Didn't think to, or didn't bother to?" He couldn't help but find her amusement both a little grating as well as somewhat contagious.
"Didn't think to. But not to worry, I wouldn't have if I'd have thought of it." At that, they both laughed.
He took a deep breath and raised them to his eyes again. He surveyed what he could make out of the horde. They were a mass of moving flesh, perpetually eager for death and chaos. He sighed and handed it back to her. "I can't see all of them, a lot are in the trees, it looks like."
"They're coming, though. They'll be at the gates by evening."
"That fast?" He hoped to postpone it until daybreak if possible.
"Definitely. If not sooner. They're moving fast—" She pulled her face away and looked out across the way, her sentence cut off by a look of chagrined surprise. "Oh, that's not good. That's really bad. That's really, really, really bad." She was looking back through the binoculars before she had finished speaking.
"What?" A frisson of fear ran through him. So far as he could tell, Sherry was almost entirely fearless. Anything that she thought was 'really, really, really bad' was probably enough to literally make most people wet themselves.
"That's a tainted elephant. It must have been at a zoo and survived. I can't believe they survived here, much less reproduced. This is not anything like their natural environment. And now it's on their side." She shuddered.
"What's an elephant?" he felt stupid, despite the fact that of course there was no way for him to know. He wasn't an Earther.
"It's a massive animal. They live in Africa and Asia, mostly. In the deserts, I think. I don't know all that much about them. But what I do know is that they can pull up entire trees with their trunks, and push the walls down. They're that big and that powerful. I wonder how many of them that thing slaughtered before they managed to taint it."
Alistair laughed. "You're yanking my chain, aren't you? That's a joke."
When she turned to face him, the grim, closed look on her face shocked him. "No, Alistair. No joke. That's an elephant, and there's pretty much nothing that can stop it. It weighs several tons, can uproot and carry around trees, and it takes more than a machine gun to kill it. We don't have an elephant gun, and we were out of armor-penetrating rounds a few hours into the first battle." She turned to slowly lower herself down the ladder. "I've got to talk to Jesse."
Alistair stared through the binoculars for a moment, seeing the elephant just before it disappeared into the woods. It was massive indeed, with shriveled gray flesh lined by the rotting red and black of Darkspawn taint. He wondered what color it had been before, and if it had lost all of its hair. It was ugly, he thought, but even more frightening than ugly. The forest bent and shifted visibly where the creature passed, leaving a mangled trail behind it.
He went to follow her, but hadn't taken the binoculars down yet. He was about to drop it down when a bright flash caught his eye. He sought the spot where he'd seen it, and saw a man on horseback enter into a clearing in the woods. At first, he thought little of it and was about to lower the binoculars. But then more men followed the first. A steady line of them broke the clearing, and he realized what he was seeing.
This was an army, approaching from the west while the Darkspawn approached from the south.
"This is not good," he whispered. "This is bad, really, really, really bad."
Then he climbed down the ladder in Sherry's wake. Loghain was coming, and their tiny compound was caught right in the middle of the traitor and the tainted beast.