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Something banged on the gates a third time. Ciri braced for the enemy to come crashing through, her hand tight around the hilt of her sword. Instead, a youngish-sounding voice called out from beyond the gates.
"I can't come in unless you open!"
Ciri looked to Cullen. He nodded at the Iron Bull and Owain, who hauled open the gates. A gangly young man barely out of his teens half stumbled through, his face obscured by a battered, wide-brimmed hat. At his feet, three heavily armored men lay dead, their helms and breastplates marred by jagged red crystals that seemed to be growing through the metal.
"I'm Cole," the young man said anxiously, pushing back the brim of his hat to reveal a ghostly-pale face and nearly colorless blue eyes. "I came to warn you. Oh!" he exclaimed, staring at Ciri. "You're not from here!"
"The warning, Cole?" Ciri prompted the strange boy, ignoring the stares from the others.
Cole blinked and turned back to look out the open gates to the dead scattered just beyond. "I came to help. People are coming to hurt you. You probably already know."
"Speak sense," Cullen said impatiently.
Cole leaned in close as if sharing a secret. "The Templars come to kill you."
"Templars?" Cullen demanded. "What madness is this? Attacking over our alliance with the mages?"
"The red Templars belong to the Elder One," Cole said. "He knows what you did. You made him angry when you took his mages." He pointed across the lake to a short mountain where the enemy forces were amassing, and Ciri squinted. Something didn't seem right about the height of the man at the head of the army. "There."
Cullen swore. "Maker's breath, that's Samson! Why would he do this?"
"Is Samson the enormous one?" she asked. She could see a normal-sized man standing with the cadaverous giant, but at this distance, she couldn't make out any features.
"No, he's the one holding the former Knight-Commander of Kirkwall's sword," Cullen said grimly. "I don't know the monster."
Ciri nodded. Cullen would recognize a former brother or sister from Kirkwall. "We need a plan, Commander. Any ideas you have, quickly."
"Haven isn't built to withstand this sort of attack," he said. "If we're to have any chance at winning this, we'll need to turn the tide quickly. The faster we get those trebuchets into play, the better our chances."
"Iron Bull," Ciri called out. "Have the Chargers make a sweep of Haven. Get all the villagers to the chantry to take shelter. Evelyn, go with them. Your healing skills will be needed. Olgierd, Triss, Varric, Cassandra, Blackwall, with me."
"Yes, Boss."
"We're with you, My Lady," Cassandra said firmly.
Olgierd turned to Josephine and lightly touched her elbow. "Go with Evelyn, Lady Josephine."
Josephine swallowed hard, then drew herself up proudly. "Stay safe, Messere Olgierd. Come back to me in one piece."
"You have my word."
Evelyn, Josephine, and the Chargers took off back toward Haven, and Cullen raised his voice to address the assembled soldiers and mages.
"Mages! The invaders are Templars – this fight will not be easy! Templars! Do not let our mages fall to Smites and Silences! Guard each other's backs! With the Hand! For your lives – for the Inquisition!"
They let out a roar and rushed through the gates past Ciri and her small group. Her heart clenched as a particularly tall Templar passed by in the company of Dorian, Solas, and Sera.
Don't die – please don't die.
She pushed down her worry. There was no time to fret. "Let's go."
They pressed straight ahead through the mess of tents to the trebuchet on the bank. She didn't need to tell her companions what to do; they split off in pairs, Blackwall and Varric, Cassandra and Olgierd, standing ready to defend against attackers on either side. Ciri and Triss hung back behind the trebuchet, watching and waiting.
The enemy Templars poured around the frozen lake from both sides as the soldiers closest to the trebuchet twisted it on its base.
"Keep them off us!" one of the soldiers called out.
Between one breath and the next, the army was on them. Ciri braced against the assault, cutting down a Templar with strange red crystals growing from his helmet and spinning to face the next enemy. She ran him through, dancing back as Triss swung out with her staff and set a cluster of armored Templars on fire.
She took a hand off her sword hilt and waved it over the blade. A crackling sheen of ice trailed after her hand, coating the dark steel in a mystical frost colder than a Skelligan winter. In her peripheral vision, a giant bear – the shapeshifter from the Witchwood – plowed through a squad of enemy Templars, snarling and swiping with heavy claws.
She spun back and flung an arcane bolt at a monstrously deformed Templar. He looked grotesque, bare-chested and hunchbacked with discolored skin and huge crystals of red lyrium jutting out of his back. The Templar staggered, his shoulder ripped apart, and raised a clawed hand to fling a glob of something corrosive and red at her. She dodged and lashed out with Zireael, cutting deep into his malformed ribs. He swung at her with a long, clawed arm. She pirouetted out of the way and darted back in to slice at his unprotected stomach.
Dead.
She moved on to the next, Triss at her back and tents trampled into the ground all around her. There seemed to be no end to the strange Templars. With each new foe she faced, she braced for the bone-aching wave of a Silence or a Smite, but it never came. They favored stranger tactics. Only her hard-earned reflexes allowed her to dodge the sizzling globs of molten something the deformed Templars threw from a distance with unerring accuracy. The larger, more heavily armored Templars that seemed fused with their armor had a terrifying ability to turn the somewhat normal-looking ones into grotesques. And they hit hard, her arms trembling with every sword strike she caught on her blade.
Blood spattered her face. It smelled off, hot and burnt like the strange molten projectiles. She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and dove back in.
A Templar exploded into flame before he could touch the trebuchet. One of the mages screamed, high and piercing, and the bear roared in response. Arrows flew, and Varric's crossbow answered. Ciri flickered across the battlefield, cutting down their Templars, slashing Zireael's blade through crystal and armor and flesh again and again. Her fingers slipped around the hilt, slick from the wrong-smelling blood.
Again.
The trebuchet's heavy counterweight released, and the boulder flew through the night. It landed with a muffled whump beyond the treeline. A dozen distant voices cried out in agony.
One of the soldiers manning the trebuchet shouted to Ciri. "Go check on the other trebuchet! They aren't firing!"
Ciri glanced around the battlefield. There were enough mages and Inquisition soldiers still holding the line. She darted through the ether, coming out to gut an enemy Templar, and turned to Blackwall and Varric. "Find Triss! We're going to the next trebuchet!"
She did it again, cutting down a Templar pressing Cassandra back toward the tents, and repeated her instructions to Olgierd and the Seeker. She stepped through the ether a final time, back to Triss.
The six of them fought their way up the path, mud and snow churning red beneath their boots. They slashed and lunged and dodged, always pressing forward. Sweat dripped down her forehead, unpleasantly cool in the cold night air. Her arms trembled with every blow she blocked.
Triss swore as the trebuchet came into view. Enemy Templars stood around it, corpses sprawled at their feet.
"Damn them!"
Varric shot the farthest Templar through the eye slit of his helmet with deadly aim, and he dropped like a stone. Ciri raised her tired arms and charged into battle.
Again.
"Damn – Ciri!" Triss called as she turned one of the corpses over.
She looked over to see what upset her friend so, and her heart sank. Mage robes, and white-blond hair. Jance, the apprentice. Damn it. She knelt beside him and closed his eyes with a gentle hand, wishing there was more she could do.
"Lady Ciri, we need to man the trebuchet," Cassandra said.
Blackwall took the siege machine in at a glance. "It only needs one person on the crank. The rest of us will keep the bastards off your back."
"Cassandra," Ciri ordered her, standing up again. "Quickly."
"Yes, my lady."
Cassandra rushed to the trebuchet platform, and Ciri drew on her magic, casting what Solas had called a "heroic aura" spell. Her arms stopped trembling. Her pounding heart slowed. At her sides, Triss and Olgierd looked similarly bolstered.
Not a moment too soon, either. More Templars came up the path from where they'd come from, and still more from the far side of the trebuchet by the frozen lake. They swarmed around their battered group, weapons gleaming dully in the moonlight.
Again.
Ciri threw herself into the fight. She dodged molten projectiles, she spun and ducked and slashed. Crystal and armor screeched against steel swords. Blood stained the ground. Bodies fell.
The counterweight dropped as Olgierd ran an archer through, and the boulder flew through the night. Ciri dispatched her opponent and turned to watch, her heart in her throat.
It smashed into the side of the mountain with an echoing boom. Snow cascaded down in a torrent, cutting off the rest of the army. The last of the Templars by the trebuchet fell at Blackwall's feet as the snow crashed down into the pass.
"Fucking finally," Varric muttered. "Let's reload this thing and –"
A blood-chilling screech echoed through the mountain, bestial and full of fury. Ciri glanced up and shouted a warning, flinging herself between time and space to grab Cassandra and drag her off the trebuchet in the nick of time. A gout of strange red fire engulfed the war machine, and it burned with the same peculiar smell as the Templars' blood.
"They have a dragon?" Varric yelled.
"Back to Haven!" Ciri cried as the dragon circled above the village, setting tents and buildings alight with its sickly red flames. "Now!"
They pelted back down the path past the trail of corpses they'd left behind. The smith, Harritt, shouted for help as they neared his workshop, its roof in flames and its door jammed. He threw himself against it as it held fast.
Ciri tugged him out of the way for Triss as her friend blew it open with Aard, her hand shaping the sign in the air. Harritt darted inside with a quick thanks, and they ran on.
"Move! Move it!" Cullen shouted as mages and soldiers rushed through the gates. "Everyone back to the chantry, now! It's the only building that might hold against that monster!" He gave Ciri a grim look before he turned to follow the retreating men and women. "At this point, just make them work for it."
The peace and merriment that had filled Haven not half an hour before were nowhere to be found. The dead filled the winding dirt paths as the grotesque Templars did their best to stymie the retreat. Slushy mud churned brownish-red beneath her feet and homes burned on all sides. They pressed forward, not stopping for anything. Ciri was grateful she'd thought to send the Chargers into the village for the noncombatants. Barring extreme foolishness or poor luck, they were all safe within the chantry.
Revered Mother Kordula, the Chantry emissary, held open the doors for them, a bloodied mace clutched in her hand. "Quickly now!" she said, her eyes darting across their weary faces. "Is that all of you?"
Ciri nodded, and the revered mother closed the door behind them and slammed the heavy bar down across it, blocking out the invaders. She took a step inside and promptly tripped over someone's legs. They moaned in pain, and she looked down to see one of the Inquisition's Templars lying on the floor, her thigh sliced open to the bone. A mage hurried over, potion in hand, and knelt at her side.
"Easy, Ser. We'll have you back on your feet in no time."
Cullen called out her title from deeper within the packed Chantry. Ciri carefully wove her way through the tight crowd in his direction, her companions at her heels. She broke through to find him standing near the wall with the other advisors and a few mages and Templars. Raúl slumped tiredly against the stone wall, a bandage around his forearm and a gash across his cheek. Owain seemed unharmed, but exhaustion lined his face. He nodded to Ciri, looking her up and down carefully for injuries.
"You are well?" Josephine inquired, giving Olgierd the same look over.
"As well as can be expected," Olgierd said, "But in one piece, as promised."
Ciri gave Cullen her attention. "Commander, that dragon –"
"Maker, I know." He sighed explosively. "Whatever advantage over the invaders we might have had with the trebuchets, that monster just stole from us."
"Archdemons look like that."
Ciri jerked around, heart pounding. Cole was suddenly there, and she was sure he hadn't been a moment before. He perched on an empty chair between Raúl and Chancellor Roderick, watching everyone from beneath the brim of his broad hat.
"I saw one in the Fade once," Cole continued. "That's what it looked like."
The Inquisition's people didn't frighten easily, but such a pronouncement had them shifting nervously. Leliana cut in before it got out of hand.
"Impossible," she declared. "The last Blight was only a decade ago. We would have seen much more darkspawn activity on the surface before the appearance of an archdemon if this truly was one."
Cullen shook his head. "I don't care what it looks like," he said angrily, ever practical. "It's cut a path for that army! They'll kill everyone in Haven!"
Cole looked up at Cullen with pale blue eyes. "The Elder One wants the Maker's Hand, not the village." His strange gaze shifted to Ciri. "He wants the Hand's hand, the magic hand. Laedrit lámh. He won't stop until he has it."
"Why?" Ciri asked. "Why does he want me so badly?"
Cole blinked at her. "I don't know. He's too loud to listen to. It hurts to try."
Cullen ignored Cole. "Lady Hand, they have our backs to the wall here. I don't see any way for us to survive this. The avalanche slowed them – we could turn the last trebuchet, cause one more slide."
"That would bury Haven, Commander," Cassandra objected.
The look on Cullen's face reminded her of Fiona's when she'd met her in Redcliffe, grieved but resolute. "We're dying, Cassandra. But we can make it happen on our terms."
"Before you decide to kill us, Commander, you should know hope isn't completely lost," Chancellor Roderick said calmly. "There's a path out the back of the chantry that leads into the mountains – the pilgrim's path. I've walked it before, in the summer months. We can evacuate with their army none the wiser."
"But once they find out we've left, they'll pursue us," Owain pointed out. "We need to stop them here."
Ciri looked beyond their group to the packed chantry, at the injured, the dying, the frightened. Here and there, sisters and brothers led others in the chant, their voices barely louder than the weeping and moaning. Parts had been sectioned off into a makeshift infirmary – she could see Evelyn's blonde hair among the mages there, and Mihris' gray. And above it all, she could still hear the dragon screeching outside.
They're all depending on us. On me.
"If I turn the trebuchet –"
"Ciri, no!" Triss interrupted.
"Triss, yes!" she shot back. "If I turn the trebuchet and cause an avalanche, how long will I need to stall before everyone's safely out of reach?"
Cullen considered it, then shook his head. "Too long. Even with all your powers, they'd overwhelm you. We'll need to send a small force out to hold that position. Half an hour, maybe longer."
"Volunteers only," Ciri said, her thoughts racing. "Mages, preferably. Ones who can Fade step, or use a similar power. They'll have an easier time escaping."
That cut off whatever Owain was going to say, and he looked away, frustration written across his weary face.
"Is your power enough to see you to safety?" Josephine asked anxiously.
Ciri nodded. "It is."
"I'll need to send soldiers with you," Cullen said. "That trebuchet isn't loaded."
Damn.
"Cullen, I can't guarantee their safety if they come –" Ciri started.
Cullen cut her off implacably. "This is war, Lady Hand. None of us are safe."
"Then choose people who understand that." She looked to Cole, who hopped off the chair. She climbed up and raised her voice above the din. "Inquisition! You will be evacuating shortly through a back passage. Stay calm and help the injured, and follow Chancellor Roderick and the advisors. A small group will buy time for the retreat. I need volunteers from among the mages – come forward only if you feel you can stand against the enemy for half an hour, and you know the Fade step spell."
Olgierd and Triss exchanged a look, and Triss spoke for both of them. "You're not leaving us behind."
"Thank you," she said quietly, watching the crowd shift and mutter. Then someone started pushing through in her direction, and another followed. Then two more. Less than a dozen mages came to her in all, every one of them still battered from the earlier fighting.
Fiona looked at her with steely eyes. "I will guard your back, Lady Hand."
"You have my thanks, Grand Enchanter."
Ciri looked at the rest. Solas, Vivienne, Dorian, Letia, and a handful of mages from the rebellion. "You," she said, with a nod to the ones she knew. "And you, you, and you."
The three she indicated, a burly, black-haired man with a bristling mustache and an olivine complexion, a pale, wiry man with a short blond ponytail, and a curvy woman with heavy freckles and riotous brown curls, all nodded back.
"What's the plan?" Dorian asked.
"We're stalling until everyone's clear, then we're triggering an avalanche with the last trebuchet," Ciri said. "We're burying Haven, and the invading army with it."
One of the mages she didn't know blanched, but Vivienne smiled coldly. "Good," she said. "As they have no mercy for Haven's villagers, we'll show none to them."
Owain caught her by the hand as she turned to lead the group to the chantry doors. She looked back, and her heart skipped a beat at the storm brewing in his eyes.
"I'll come back," she said softly.
His lips twitched with a ghost of a smile. "I'm holding you to that."
Her hand slipped slowly from his grasp. "With me, everyone," she said as she tore her gaze from his. Triss and Solas were the first to follow. Olgierd, saying his own goodbyes to Josephine, was the last.
Two soldiers, still looking relatively fresh, met them at the doors. They saluted sharply as Ciri approached.
"Corporal Krenn, Your Worship!" the woman barked. "We'll get it loaded for you right and proper!"
"Private Noyes, Your Worship!" echoed the man. He was barely out of adolescence. "We're with you to the end, My Lady!"
Ciri just nodded, throat tight. She couldn't promise them anything, and they both knew it.
Another pair of soldiers lifted off the heavy beam barring the door, and their group slipped through the gap back into the cold night. It slammed shut behind them, drawing the attention of a roaming squad of Templars.
"Move!"
Fiona swept her staff in a tight arc at the approaching Templars, and lightning lanced down from the sky. They stiffened and jerked as it struck them, moaning through clenched teeth. Solas made a tugging motion with his staff and a faint green wave of energy crashed down on the injured men, slamming them to the ground with bone-shattering force.
They ran on, the two soldiers in the center. Ciri wasn't sure who cast it, but the cool dry-water sensation of the barrier spell fell over her as they charged ahead. At her side, Triss flung fire at the deformed Templars, while Letia cast a spell that froze them in their tracks. Vivienne conjured a gleaming sword of pure light and wielded it with a dueler's grace.
And at Dorian's imperious wave, the dead rose to defend their flank.
The fight to the trebuchet passed in a blur of spellfire and blood. The wiry mage cried out and stumbled, molten red burning a hole through his robe. Olgierd slung the mage's arm over his shoulders and continued on, still tossing out fire with his free hand. Ciri cut down one of the Templars guarding the trebuchet and spun out of the way as his wrong-smelling blood spurted from his neck.
"Quickly now!" she said to the two soldiers. "We'll keep them off you."
Krenn and Noyes hastened to the small pile of boulders, rolling one over to the trebuchet's sling quickly and carefully. The burly, mustachioed mage helped them lift it into place.
As Vivienne, Fiona, Solas, and the injured mage placed magical mines around the area in anticipation of the next wave, Ciri took advantage of the momentary respite to speak to the last of the rebel mages.
"If we're fighting alongside each other, I'd like to know your name."
"Not one for calling someone 'hey you'?" the mage joked, not taking her eyes off the path. "Ilana Crane of the Cumberland Circle. That's Kaspar from Perendale helping with the boulder. The injured one is Derren from Kinloch Hold."
There was still no sign of the enemy as the soldiers and Kaspar finished loading the boulder and winching the sling into position. "Why did you volunteer?"
"You asked for fighters, and I'm a battlemage," Ilana said simply. "Besides, you saved us from a world of trouble when you took down that magister. We owe you, Lady Hand."
Ciri frowned. "I'm not the Hand of the Maker."
Ilana shook her head, sending her thick brown curls flying. "The way I hear it, you've been involved in more than one miracle. Tell you what," she said as the Templars started to approach their position. "If we survive this, I'll call you whatever you want."
"It's a deal!" she yelled over the cries of the Templars as they triggered the first line of mines.
And the battle was on.
Again.
Five minutes left. The bodies were starting to pile up, and their group was showing signs of fatigue. Derren had fallen by the tenth minute and Noyes by the twentieth. The ground was pitted and torn, covered in ice and burn marks and suspicious wet, shiny patches where some Templars had fallen that Ciri didn't want to examine too closely.
"Nearly there," she said, her arms trembling.
Kaspar gave her a dubious look and jabbed his staff at her. She sighed as warm energy flowed through her body, relieving minor aches and pains and soothing her overworked muscles.
Several yards away, a large pile of cracked red lyrium crystals lay still. Ciri could hardly believe it had been a man once, but the monstrous thing – eight feet tall with a clublike arm and massive spikes coming off its back – had worn a Templar skirt and helm, both absurdly small on its massive, distorted body.
It had killed Noyes with insulting ease. Letia was the one to make victory possible, capturing it in a crushing prison while the rest of them bombarded it with all they had. Luckily, its – his – death had bought them a minute to breathe, and they laid another array of mines while Krenn aimed the trebuchet.
It creaked and slowly turned behind Ciri as she kept her eyes on the path.
"Triss," she said under her breath.
Her friend leaned in slightly. "Yes?"
"The advisors reacted...poorly to Olgierd's teleportation. Don't let them see your portal."
"Understood."
The creaking and groaning of the wood and gears stopped, and Krenn said tersely, "Ready."
"Four more minutes," Letia said. "Who's watching the mountains for the signal?"
A screech cut off any response, and Ciri looked up to see the dragon circling overhead.
"Retreat!" she cried. "Go! Now!"
Kaspar grabbed Krenn. "This will be uncomfortable, Corporal," he said and dragged her along with him as he Fade-stepped away.
The others followed, some more reluctantly than the rest. As the dragon screeched again, she shouted at Olgierd and Triss, "Go! I'm right behind you!"
Olgierd swore and disappeared in a cloud of red and black. Triss gave her an anguished look and raised a hand to summon a portal.
"Don't. Die."
Her friend stepped through, and the portal snapped shut right as the dragon landed. It roared in pain as half a dozen magical mines went off beneath its bulk. Ciri dodged, throwing up a barrier over the trebuchet as it flailed, spurting red fire across the area.
Crack-BOOM!
The crates stacked against the rocks exploded violently, flinging her through the air. She landed on something soft and warm and scrambled off the dead Templar archer with a shudder. As she struggled to her feet, her ears ringing, the dragon screeched again, and Ciri reapplied her barrier, realizing with horror that she'd lost hold of Zireael in the explosion.
Movement caught her eye. The cadaverous giant from atop the mountain was walking through the flames with a measured pace, his gaze fixed on her. Her breath caught in her chest.
What is he?
He was close to nine feet tall, and like the Templars, had shards of red lyrium growing from his face, warping and twisting his features. His ribs seemed to be fused to his breastplate, growing over it to hold it in place. His hands were dark and clawlike. There didn't seem to be anything human in his cold, staring eyes.
He stopped by the dragon, who subsided at his presence. Ciri's skin crawled at the wrongness of the being. No dragon should look that tainted, that foul. Had this monster infected the dragon somehow?
"I have come for the Anchor," the giant announced. "Surrender it willingly, and I will grant you a swift death."
Ciri clenched her marked hand. "You killed all these people just to get at the mark? What kind of monster are you?"
"I am beyond your understanding," the giant said haughtily. "Children beg for answers to questions they cannot understand. My will is absolute. What are the lives of traitors and peasants to a god?"
"You're mad," Ciri breathed.
"What is madness?" the giant asked. "It is the knowledge of a truth too terrible to know. Beg for my mercy, pretender, for there are no gods to grant it to you. I once breached the Fade in the name of another. I stormed the Golden City to claim it for the God of Silence. And I will tell you, this, Pretender, so you will know why I must succeed – I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty."
There was an equally terrible emptiness behind the giant's eyes.
"Who are you?" Ciri demanded.
"Exalt the Elder One, Pretender," the giant declared, extending a hand and dragging her forward with a wave of magic. "Exalt Corypheus. A new god for a better age."
He gripped her by the wrist beneath her marked hand and dangled her in the air, a strange orb covered in thin, curving lines floating above his other hand. It crackled ominously with a red light. Ciri breathed evenly, calming her racing heart. I can get out of this. But she wouldn't. Attacking Corypheus or his dragon head-on was suicide, and she couldn't leave without starting the avalanche. Waiting it out was her best, worst, and only option.
"Your compliance will be rewarded with a painless death," Corypheus promised her, staring with his horribly empty eyes. "Know that the anchor goes to serve a better master."
Ciri made a good show of struggling. "Let me go!"
"The process of removing it begins now."
She shrieked in agony as the red light around the orb flared and dragged at the green light in her palm, grasping and twisting. Her magic instinctively reached to do something, to lash out, to spirit her away, and she dragged it back with clenched teeth. Not yet.
Corypheus flung her away, and she collided with the trebuchet, her hand and shoulder screaming in pain and her back throbbing.
"It is permanent," he spat. "The arrogance – to claim my work through your clumsy flailing. You have spoilt it."
Ciri got to her feet, drawing her dagger and grasping her agate pendant with her smarting hand. She backed up against the heavy machinery of the trebuchet, the crank by her foot.
"Very well," Corypheus continued darkly. "I shall begin anew, find another way to restore Tevinter and give Thedas the empire and god it deserves."
Over his head, a faint streak of fire shot into the sky in the distance. Ciri didn't let her triumph show on her face.
"And you, Pretender – no god can allow even such a paltry rival. Witness your end, and die with dignity."
Ciri laughed scornfully. "Just try."
Corypheus took one step forward, and Ciri channeled her magic into her agate pendant. Lightning, blinding white and scorching hot, shot down from the heavens to strike him in his deformed breastplate. He cried out in rage and pain as she kicked the crank, releasing the counterweight and sending the boulder flying.
She pulled on her magic and stepped through the ether as the snow pounded down the mountain onto Haven, injured, exhausted, and furious, her hand a leaden, agonizing weight at her side.