29. Strategic Withdrawal
"Where's Alistair?" Callbrith demanded, jerking Jesse around to face him, ignoring the onrushing Darkspawn.
"He's dead!" Jesse yelled, his face contorted with rage.
"Dead where?" Callbrith snarled. When Jesse went to turn back to securing Sherry into the wagon, Callbrith slammed his fist against the side of it. "'Dead WHERE?' I said, and you will tell me now!"
"Over there, at the Semi," Jesse barked. "But if we don't get out of here now, we'll all be joining him!"
"Fuck you," Callbrith told him. "Run, you son of a whore. I'm getting Alistair."
Callbrith stomped over and found Alistair slumped against the Semi. His body leaned forward, his hands draped on the ground. A broken piece of metal protruded from his abdomen, and Callbrith groaned. Getting him off of that was going to be hard, but he couldn't leave his fellow Warden—his friend—like this to be eaten by the Darkspawn.
"We don't have time for this, they're getting closer," Wynne told him. He looked up to find Wynne and Zevran shifting nervously, looking at the rapidly encroaching line of Darkspawn.
"Help me get him on my horse," Callbrith demanded. He was happy to be speaking in Ferelden again, even if only among those from his own world. Only Sherry had bothered to learn it, so they most spoke English.
The familiar language comforted him in his sense of loss. But there was no time for being maudlin. He grabbed Alistair and dragged him off of the pipe. They shoved him onto the horse with a great deal of difficulty.
Callbrith accepted Zevran's help getting on his horse, and they all mounted, racing toward the wagon that held Sherry's prone form. Everything was falling apart. Nothing was going the way they wanted it to.
As they caught up to the rumbling wagon, its team panting and sweating as they were driven towards the gates, they heard Sherry groaning and crying out in pain. "Stop!" Wynne cried.
It took some doing but they stopped the wagon, the order to stop flowing through the group at various speeds so that they ended up spread out while Wynne stopped to dismount and murmur through a Heal and then a spell of paralysis. With Sherry immobilized and slightly healed, they all turned back toward the walls, the Darkspawn gaining on them rapidly as the wagon horses fought to pick their speed back up.
But all of the horses were tired. Trying to keep up with the Semi had been futile, yet they'd all pushed their horses hard. But Jesse's had taken the worst of it, being whipped into a froth to try to get there to ensure he could save Sherry's life.
Its breathing became ragged and it began to stumble. He slowed it, until the wagon caught up, then he leaped into the seat beside the driver. Callbrith hated the man, and when he looked back to see the horse slow and stop, sides heaving, he hated him more. The animal's terrified screams when the Darkspawn caught up with it made him look back. They had gutted it, and the poor creature screamed again as it tripped on its own entrails. A man ahead of him turned and pointed a gun. Callbrith dodged and winced at the biting roar of the weapon. But when he looked back, the horse had fallen, never to scream with inhuman pain again.
Callbrith caught the man's eye, nodding before he turned back forward. The inherent mercenary cruelty of leaving the noble beast to the tender mercies of the monsters behind them had bothered the other man as well. Callbrith marked him well, aware that he might be an ally someday down the line.
"You're wasting ammo, Anthony!" Jesse rebuked the man.
"You're wasting horses," Anthony yelled in reply.
Jesse glared but said nothing more.
As they approached the gates, they realized that the stop to immobilize Sherry had stolen precious moments to the point that the Darkspawn were mere yards behind them. Their plans would be severely disrupted, especially since more horses were lagging behind, ever closer to the enemy lines.
When they passed the line of oil, the horses jumping over the trough created to hold it, the machine guns thundered to life, their staccato bark mowing Darkspawn in back and forth sweeps. Dirt flew up from the ground where they missed, and those escorting Sherry felt the madness of a too-close encounter with the horrid, writhing mass behind them.
Sherry and Alistair's sacrifice had stolen the secondary advantage of the Darkspawn, the tainted elephant. But their primary advantage remained—they had numbers so massive that in a war of attrition, they couldn't possibly lose.
Callbrith's was the last horse to leap the pools of oil, lagging behind thanks to carrying double. Although short, Callbrith was muscular and powerful, and the added weight of a man in plate did no favors to the poor beast. Its back hoof failed to clear and it floundered for a moment, before surging up and out of the oil.
Then the bullets singing past their heads struck the barrels and the rolling 'kaboom!' of the explosion rocked over them. The poor gelding, burdened as he was, put on a terrified sprint that bolted him past the wagon and into the courtyard barely behind the front line.
Callbrith struggled to control the poor thing, finally stopping him entirely and handing the reins over to one of the adolescent children assigned to care for the horses during the upcoming siege. She frowned at him and shook her head as Alistair was pulled off. Callbrith felt a bit put-up. That one hadn't really been his fault!
