Flora began to back slowly away from the barrier, not taking her eyes off the slender golden filaments. Her summoned shield gave off a soft undercurrent of sound; a sibilant hiss as flecks of stray energy dissipated into the damp air. The corpses pressed themselves against the artificial net; their skeletal fingers scrabbling with mindless persistence as they sought to cross the bridge. She fancied that the reanimated dead were staring at her: the hollow eye sockets hosting some arcane prescience that allowed them to focus on the cause of their delay. The drizzle was falling heavier now, the road slithered beneath her boots as earth subsided into mud.
Why are you WALKING BACKWARDS?! screeched her general, incredulous.
So I can see when my barrier goes away.
Flora was sure that the edges of the gleaming net were fading, the fibrous strands a little less bright than they had been moments before. Her heart sunk in her chest: she had retreated a handful of yards and already her barrier was weakening.
Go, now!
Flora turned to face the sprawl of buildings that marked the edge of town. At this distance, the barricade looked like the silhouette of a vast and unwieldy creature reclining across the road. She could see pinpricks of flame moving behind it; where men with torches stood in hastily assembled lines.
RUN!
Flora launched herself forward into the shadow, grateful for the road's gentle decline. The muddy ground clung to her boots with each meeting; more than once, she felt her foot slide from beneath her as she landed. The air sounded unnaturally loud as it escaped from her lungs in shallow bursts, amplified by adrenaline.
A few moments later, she glanced over her shoulder to check the brightness of her barrier - and caught the very moment that it vanished; swept away as though by the incoming tide. Flora was so horrified - she had not yet covered thirty yards - that she stopped abruptly, jaw dropping in dismay. A screech of reproval from the back of her mind jolted her from the morass of disbelief: she turned her back to the enemy and fled towards the barricade, abandoning all pretense of bravery.
Why did it break so soon? she bemoaned, not daring to check if the skeletal horde had realised their way was now clear. I didn't even get far. It's not fair.
Battling Darkspawn would have been a more valuable occupation of your time at Ostagar. Instead of batting your eyelashes at your senior officer.
Flora fell into a pothole. The ground came up to meet her so rapidly that she barely had time to thrust her palms out to break the impact. Mud splattered over her face in cold and clinging droplets. For the first time she heard the enemy moving behind her. The sound was chilling: naked bones grinding together, exposed muscle and tendon working to move ossified limbs. The dead were not designed to be in motion, and yet they moved with preternatural speed.
To the whale boats, she thought wildly as she ran, recalling the chant that rang out in Herring whenever a spout was sighted in the bay.
To the whale boats, to the whale boats!
The smell of the grave surrounded Flora like a freshly exhumed crypt. She scrambled to her feet, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes. To her alarm, she felt something tug at the trailing hem of her coat; a guttural snarl wending through the air. Before she could summon her shield, something whistled dangerously close to her ear. There came a solid thump of impact, and an immediate clatter of collapsing bone.
A heartbeat later, a second arrow followed the first; streaking past Flora like a small bird.
Leliana, she realised, the grip on her coat now gone. I must be within range of the tavern; she's on the roof.
The barricade was now thirty yards away; behind it, the defenders of Redcliffe were girding themselves for battle. A tangle of shouts rose above the drizzle, makeshift weapons thrust aloft in fearful defiance. The torchlight slid over an array of pale and frightened faces, glimpsed in fragments through the gap in the barricade.
Flora knew without looking that the horde were on her heels: the sound and the odour of the cadaverous charge grew stronger with each passing moment. They were not slowed by the mud, their dead sight unimpeded by the streaming sky. The butcher's miasma was laced with something else; a thin vein of the familiar. She had smelt the same scent creeping beneath laboratory doors at the Circle: it was the acrid tang of the arcane.
There was no time to think about what this might mean. The barricade was just ahead; she could hear the men yelling behind it, the light from the braziers spilling beneath the wood. A boy - she recognised him as Teagan's squire - hovered near the oil-soaked trench. A lit torch blazed in one hand; indecision contorting his youth's face.
"Light it!"
But Flora's entreaty was snatched by a sly wind; one that blew the drizzle and her words back into her face. She raised her voice, flailing her arms in what she hoped was an explanatory manner.
The boy, horrified at the sight of the dead flooding the road, dropped the torch. The oil-soaked earth lit up like a Satinalia hearth, bluish flame surging the breadth of the ditch. For an instant Flora felt the heat lash her face, then her shield billowed in a ship's sail around her and she half-fell through the thicket of fire. Eyes streaming from the sting of smoke, she took a blind step forward; her barrier disintegrating. Then a thrust-out hand took hold of her sleeve and hauled her ungently through the gap in the barricade.
Flora looked up into the dull gleam of a steel breastplate, then tilted her head back further to accommodate Alistair's height. Her brother-warden knocked his visor back with an impatient fist, eyes focusing on her face. His pupils were dark and hollow pinpricks; the handsome face taut with tension. Beyond the barricade the horde had run into the flames; a sickening smell of roasting meat drifted past on the smoke. The noise they made was indescribable; but fire could not take proper hold of reanimated bone and the delay would be short. The repetitive thud of Leliana's arrows embedding themselves in dead flesh was like a heartbeat; the lay sister seemed to have a bottomless quiver.
"Are you alright?" Alistair demanded, clapping a palm over a stray ember on her sleeve.
Flora nodded, the drizzle running in beads down her nose. He exhaled a breath that seemed to have been stuck at the back of his throat.
"Maker's Breath , Flo. You could've given me some warning."
"Mm," Flora agreed glumly: she could have, but she had not.
His gaze ran the length of her once again; assuring himself that she was whole and unhurt. Then, he took her by the waist - or where he estimated her waist to be beneath the loose folds of her coat - and lifted her effortlessly onto the upper part of the barricade. Flora curled her fingers around a jutting pole - part of a tavern chair, nailed unceremoniously to the pew - and peered down at him.
"Remember," he called, raising his voice above the snarls of the attackers and the shouts of the men around them. "Look to yourself first. You can't help anyone if you're- if you're - "
But Alistair could not bring himself to say it, not even in warning.
"If you're hurt," he said instead, peering up at the pale oval of her face. "Don't risk yourself for anyone."
She opened her mouth and then there was no more time: the horde had passed through the flame and had begun their assault. The bann planted himself squarely in their path; flanked by his squire and guard. The younger Guerrin lacked the elder's steadiness and calm governance, but he had always claimed a sharper edge in combat. Alistair knocked his visor back over his face and bared his sword, striding through the throng to Teagan's side with a yell of For the Wardens!
Moments later, the horde spilled around the barricade - it had delayed them mere moments - and began their attack. The lines of men dissolved into a throng, shadowed figures tussling amidst a cacophony of tangled noise. The dead were armed with an eclectic array of items repurposed as weapons - but their strength was fuelled with arcane fervour, and only decapitation or total dismemberment could stop their assault. The defenders of Redcliffe were marginally better armed; fear and adrenaline fuelling their attempts to waylay the foe.
The fray that ensued was more confusing than Flora could ever have imagined. Suddenly, the practice that she and Alistair had undertaken on the training field - opposed by other Wardens, defending bags of stationary straw - seemed laughable; a child's play of how the melee might look. In reality, battle was a knot of noise and bodies colliding; men moved and staggered and lunged in all directions without warning. There was no order to the throng, it shifted with a bloody fluidity; a man fought in single combat with a foe, then he was surrounded, then joined by an ally, then alone again. Likewise, the dead claimed no strategy: they swarmed over the defenders like a mass of grave beetles.
Flora slipped down from her perch on the barricade within seconds: nothing had struck her, but the sudden eruption of combat had startled her so much that she lost her footing. Something collided with her - a man reversing rapidly without care - and she fell back into the mud.
What do I do, she beseeched as she struggled to her feet, narrowly avoiding being trodden on. How do I help?
Cover your back, her general instructed, and survey your field. Look to those who are outnumbered and those who have little armour.
But, Alistair - someone barged into her, and she almost fell a second time.
Is competent. Look elsewhere.
A mass of battling bodies stood between her and the nearest building; Flora shuffled back until her shoulder blades pressed into the wall of the barricade. Her eyes moved over two men fighting a shambling corpse armed with a rolling pin, and then across to where Alistair and the younger Guerrin were cutting through the dead as though they were competing in a grim tourney; blades scything with a practised ease. Then her eye was drawn to a figure on the floor, a man knocked to the ground clad in garb that was barely adequate for a cold night, let alone combat. He stretched his hands in futile defence as the corpse that had bested him raised a sharp-toothed maul. Inches before the jagged club could cleave through the fragile bone and sinew of the man's face, it glanced off a gleaming curve of light. Flora's shield cut the air like a scalpel; thinner than gossamer silk and stronger than any earthly metal.
Ha! Ahaha!
The man clawed his way upright as his assailant staggered from the force of the rejected blow. A woman armed with a makeshift pike came to his defence, her face bright with fear and hatred.
Fill your lungs and move on. A shield mage ought never have a moment of respite in battle.
Flora inhaled an obedient breath - the barricade rigid at her back - then resumed her survey of the field: searching for those a heartbeat away from oblivion.
Meanwhile, her companions were proving their worth around her. The Qunari, seven foot tall and armed only with a sharpened fence post, laid waste to the foe with a cold and brutal efficiency. He thrust the improvised weapon as though it were a gift granted by some divine blacksmith; utterly confident in its ability to cause devastation. A trial of broken bones and riven flesh lay in his wake as he stormed through the fray, friend and foe scattering alike.
Twenty feet above the field, the lay sister abandoned her devout trappings and assumed the mantle of bard once again: her heart beating in time with the constant thrum of her bowstring. Her aim was as unfaltering as a hawk's pinprick stare; the form of her draw without parallel. The bow seemed an extension of her person; as though the wooden frame had sprouted in a graceful arc from the flesh of her arm.
In terms of enemies slaughtered, the Qunari would claim the greatest harvest; followed shortly by the lay sister. Their numbers exceeded the count of any other present in battle, including - to his great annoyance - the dwarven mercenary, Dwyn. Yet, once the night's fighting was done, the name most heard on the lips of the grateful townsfolk was not Sten, nor Leliana, but Alistair. Despite his Marician face and noble bearing, the young man had sought no personal glory in battle; did not seek to increase the notches on his blade by slaying as many of the foe as possible. Instead, he went to the aid of those who needed it; ploughing into the enemy with a brute force born from his blacksmith's build and taint-infused blood. He used his shield as a secondary weapon; thrusting into the skeletal features of one assailant while the steely length of his sword deflected a blow meant for a fallen ally. When his shield cracked in half, he dropped it and fought with the blade alone.
The young warrior required intervention on one occasion alone: he spotted the bann's young squire fall screaming to the mud, the bone in his right leg broken like a twig by a hammer-swing. Teagan Guerrin, unaware of the youth's plight, was hacking away at the other side of the field. Alistair, with a swiftness that belied his size, hurled himself between the boy and the wizened corpse; one steel-clad arm raised to intercept the fatal blow of the war hammer.
Halfway through its arc, the great block of stone shattered like slate; jagged shards tumbling back towards the wielder. The force of the deflection was enough to tear the decrepit arm from its socket and the limb fell to the ground amongst the shards of its weapon. For the first time, Alistair found himself in close quarters with Flora's shield; it hung before him with the fragility of a cobweb. At such close distance he could see the delicate structure of the barrier - it was not a solid wall, as it appeared from a distance, but instead had the woven appearance of a fishing net. Yet, unlike its inanimate counterpart, Flora's shield seemed a living construct: the trellis of strands had an oddly organic appearance, as though the net had been grown from veins and sinewy tendons.
The battle seemed to slow around Maric's son; men and monsters moving at half-pace. Shadow melted away like a breath in cold air, and a temporary passage cut itself through the muddling chaos of battle: he looked directly through the mass of twisting bodies to where his sister-warden was standing a dozen yards away. Flora had her back to the barricade, her face standing out like a smudge of white paint and her mouth slightly open. One small hand was raised - the palm smeared with mud - and she was gazing at him without blinking. He stared back at her for a single heartbeat, and then the frenzied milieu of battle resumed; bodies surging to fill the space between them.
Good, murmured Flora's general, it's approval like the press of a warm finger against her mind. Better range.
But Flora did not have time to bask in this rare moment of praise. As the fray began to thin - the foe overwhelmed by slow, inevitable inches - a shout came from somewhere near the tavern. Hooves sounded a hollow drumbeat against the trodden-down mud; a canter coming to a ragged clatter of a halt.
"We're overrun at the docks!" a voice rang out, high and panicked. "We need help!"
"Take the shield mage," ordered the breathless mayor, pointing his sword towards a startled Flora. "We can't spare any men."
It did not occur to her that she could dictate her own actions; that she took orders from no one save her commander, who had been dead for three weeks. In her defence she had only spent a few months as a Warden, and several years in obedient deference to Templars and senior mages. She was also disorientated from being in the midst of battle: from the noise, the rank odour of sweat and fear, the shoving and pushing from all sides.
There was no time to signal to Alistair, but he soon came to realise that the distance between them was steadily increasing. The ebb of the taint in his sister-warden's blood grew fainter; the gentle thrum of her presence dimming. He looked around to confirm with sight what his mind had already grasped: that she was no longer in the last dregs of the barricade melee.
AN: Ok so I wanted to suggest a balance here: on the one hand, Flora is a teenager with hardly any experience of battle, so it stands to reason that she'd be frightened and fumbling. On the other hand, she's not going to be TERRIFIED because of her shield (even if she's wielding it like an amateur), and the instructions of her general-spirit. So hopefully that came across! Originally this whole attack was one massive chapter but I decided to break it up. Thank you for reading and I hope everyone is well/staying safe!
