Outlander

by GreaterGoodIreland

A United Nations Peacekeeper without knowledge of the games is transported to Thedas. Unsure if he will ever be able to return, he is sucked into the conflicts of Thedas as he tries to survive with his new companions and build a new world.

60. Chapter 60: Ballroom Blitz

Chapter Sixty: Ballroom Blitz

I took my first step onto the stone of the courtyard in the Winter Palace, rushed but ready. Three things occurred.

Naturally, the eluvian closed behind me with the same whip-crack sound that I had heard on moving from Troy to the Crossroads realm. In other words, our immediate escape route had closed, and couldn't be reopened unless I got further away from the mirror's surface, as Aurelia had determined that my close presence could disrupt the full forming of the 'reality bubble' between the realms.

Simultaneously, two crossbow bolts sprouted in my torso. The shots were made from too far to have a snowball's chance of penetrating the kevlar and silverite plate, but the well sharpened edges of the point managed to dig into the first few layers of material, hanging off like vines. The impact wasn't great, but since I had literally just emerged from the eluvian, I fell back against the glass, the whole mirror threatening to fall over from my weight.

The third event was the movement all around me, a grinding of metal on metal ringing in my ears as I recovered from the crossbow hits and looked to see if anyone else had been hit. The others were fine, those with ranged weapons seeking out targets and Armen throwing up a taxing area-effect barrier to prevent any more attacks. But the metal moving in my periphery vision enveloped us from behind, a wavy shadow until it finally clanged to the ground in front of us.

A hemispherical cage, one half of it implanted in an archway behind the mirror, the other sliding off of it, attached to huge weights hanging off the wall that could close the whole arrangement with the force of a metric ton or two. It enclosed the entire area around the eluvian, set inside an archway.

I had to take a moment to appreciate the elegance of the whole arrangement. You'd think such a thing would be entirely too expensive to make just for the purposes of catching someone coming out of the eluvian, but the design has been used for a century or two in Orlais to catch everything from wyverns to lions, for the purpose of displaying them outside their native habitats.

Crossbow troops, ordered to duck until someone came through, had been stationed to keep everyone inside the cage area until it closed. And probably to shatter the eluvian too, to stop them escaping. The two bolts I had caught were probably destined for the mirror originally.

Of course, now that the mirror was closed, perhaps inexplicably to our audience, no more were coming. The crossbowmen had disappeared again, either assuming they had broken the eluvian entirely or we had closed it by accident. Armen stood at the very front, right up against the bars, sweating as he tried to maintain the barrier regardless. The others were talking among themselves, mostly in disarray, only Louise de Villars maintaining her cool and looking to me, standing fully upright just to my side, sword and shield at the ready.

My appreciation for the enemy's intelligence ran out, and irritation began scratching at my sides.

"Enough!" I shouted, "Stand to, and cover your quarters! Armen, drop that and put up personal barriers instead."

The mage didn't question the wisdom of leaving the eluvian, or myself, unprotected, and did what he was told. He waved his arm about and cast the slight blue glow of protective magic over the entire group, before dropping to a knee beside Ciara panting from the exertion. Ciara handed him some cooked pork from a pouch, wrapped up in some cloth, which he started chewing on as his eyes darted about, looking for what wasn't there.

Namely the enemy. The only sound was that of the fountains spraying, and a cold nighttime breeze.

"Where are they?" grumbled Aoife, "The cowards are hiding!" Avvars not being the most patient types, and the quickest to accuse their enemies of cowardice for tactics that they themselves are perfectly happy to employ. Not that Asala would have been any better.

"It's the middle of the night," Mariette said, sweeping her assault firelance to aim up at the balcony of the palace above, "The duty guards are likely asleep. Watching a mirror for weeks on end probably a boring assignment."

Maker knows we have enough trouble keeping our own sentries awake, even today. Even on Earth.

"Considering I have not dared to send anyone through, almost certainly," Briala agreed, "Unfortunately I do not have any contacts on this side of the palace, elves have been kept from this area and the balconies since Celene's return."

Which was a quick explanation as to why she didn't know about the trap in the first place. I sucked in a breath through my teeth, not quite sure I should let her away with such an excuse. I got the feeling she might have known but had decided we were more than capable of finding a way through it, but getting into an argument about it at that moment would have been unwise.

"Sounds about right," I lied, "Armen, find us a way out of this god damned cage. The rest of you, shoot at anything that looks more threatening than two nugs on a date."

No one said anything in reply, they just put their full attention into making sure we weren't all killed while Armen did his thing.

My friend wiped his face with his sleeve, and stood up again, still chewing the pork and examining the cage metal. "Looks like middle-grade steel," he thought aloud, "I can get us through it, but it'll take some time."

"How long?" I asked.

Armen physically counted off the bars he'd have to break to create a hole for two people to pass through at the same time, pointing to each of the sections in turn. "Ten minutes for a big hole, maybe seven for one just big enough," he replied, "Too long, but I'll get started."

Considering our ammunition and magical protection, I was a little more optimistic. Armen's staff burst forth a thin blue flame about a foot long, turning it into a giant blowtorch. Heat rolling off of it, he applied it to the first link he could find to the side nearest a fountain, the best cover anywhere near to us. I left him to it, and waved a hand to our 'guide'.

"Good," I said, "Lady Briala, can you get that eluvian open again?" I stepped as far away from the mirror as possible, leaning back on the bars, pre-empting her request to do so.

The handmaid approached the eluvian, Ciara shifting on a knee to cover her area in her absence, and she said the passphrase, in the elvhen tongue as expected.

The mirror shone a little briefly, the wave patterns of the magic clearly visible in the gold-plated surface, but they disappeared. The portal refused to open.

"You are just inside the radius that Lady Tiberia described to me, Marquis," Briala confirmed, "We might be able to open it if you lie down at the very edge." Being hemispherical, the cage's roof curved inwards and its most distant point from the eluvian was where it met the ground, directly in front or behind.

I bit my lip, not liking the idea of crowding myself on the ground when the enemy was undoubtedly making moves, but we needed an exit. I moved to the place I thought best, and got down on my hands and knees to crouch, when there was an announcement of sorts.

"The Marquis de la Fayette!" said a raised female voice, projected from above somehow, "How unexpected!"

I jumped, out of my skin and out from under the metal bars, searching for the source of the voice. I thought it was from the balcony, but I found no heat contact via my goggles.

"Her Radiance thought it was possible you would come," the voice continued, the timbre that of someone with the wisdom of years behind her, "I thought that wasn't possible. After all, your presence here means that you have forfeited the lives of everyone in the Eastern Dales that supported you."

My heart pounding, half expecting an entire legion to show up from the various archways around the courtyard, I decided to stall as best I could.

"Or maybe we'll drive you out!" I roared at the top of my voice, "Gaspard caught us off guard, but you won't!"

"I already have!" said the voice, "But where are my manners, allow me to introduce myself, your captor. I am Lady Seryl, Marquis of Jader and Countess of Halamshiral. I would thank you for driving the previous idiot out of the latter position, but your comrades have kept me out for now and you left my own city denuded of many of its shipwrights and sailors. Then again, you're not really a noble, are you? Baronet?"

A reference to my only formal rank in the Empire could have only insulted me if I actually had been a noble. Pulling rank was no great insult to me as such, but it was telling that she thought it would be.

I still couldn't find Lady Seryl's person on the balcony, but I was sure the voice was coming from somewhere from the upper floors. Using some trick of engineering to project it. It was also pretty clear that she was stalling; we had caught her troops unaware. Had she herself been awake at this hour?

"I'm very happy to hear we've inconvenienced you!" I replied loudly, as Armen cut through another bar in the cage, "But even if you have us, or kill us, no doubt you've heard of what happened in Amaranthine. What we obtained there. As we speak, our entire navy is sliding into the harbour of Jader to take your city from you, and you won't be getting into Halamshiral either!"

I received only silence in reply. Perhaps that last bit was an overreach, I thought, searching for anything out of place. Or maybe she knew something I didn't.

Without warning, Mariette let loose with her firelance, the barrel perched on the bars near the beginning of Armen's work. The noise made me drop to a knee and aim in the same direction she was by reflex, searching for the target.

The muzzle flashes were invisible in my goggles, except as a slight fuzz as the heat from her shots spread out in the air, but the bullets and their impacts were not. She had aimed up into the palace's windows, all of which were closed and covered over with curtains. It was no random shot in the dark, her bursts were aimed at a very particular part of the facade. One set of windows, in fact.

The curtains were torn by the bullets, briefly revealing the white-heat of a human body behind them, and a moan of pain echoing through the air confirmed what I couldn't believe my eyes were telling me; Mariette had tagged Seryl with five-five-six. Unfortunately, the Marquise of Jader hadn't been killed.

"She hit me!" the groaning voice said, just barely audible, "She hit me!"

"Holy shit," I said to Mariette, "How'd you know she was there?"

"The lion's head," Mariette replied, pointing at the statue in question just to the left of the window, "The voice was coming from there, so she was going to be either on one side or the other of it. Eventually, one of the curtains moved, and I had the target."

I shook my head, entirely unsure how Mariette had managed to pull that out from her hat. The voice seemed to be coming from the entire front of the palace to my ear, but admittedly, she did have the regular nightvision scope on, so she would have been able to see the curtains moving a lot better than I would have. All I saw of the glass of the windows was its heat signature, I couldn't actually see through it, especially not at the distance of dozens of feet away.

"Good shot," Ciara chirped cheerfully, "Maybe we can grab her before she escapes now."

"If we can get out of the cage," Louise said, hitting the metal with the pommel of her longsword, "How long, Armen?"

"Almost done," Armen replied, just as soon as he'd finished with another of the cage bars, "The metal isn't as well treated as I thought."

The gods of fate weren't so kind, and threw up another obstacle just as Armen completed his sentence but before he had completed his task. The guards finally arrived, the previous gunfire having convinced them of the need to gather their numbers before putting in an appearance. They might have been primitive in military terms, but they weren't stupid or ignorant, they knew what they were hearing.

They came through an archway into the courtyard in a sort of testudo formation; shields locked, half-crouched to minimise to stop us shooting their legs easily, the crossbowmen behind three full ranks of troops in all-over plate armour.

Someone had went to a lot of trouble to defeat firelances. That someone very wisely assuming that people coming through the eluvian would have access to firelances but unable to know that the armour was useless precaution, against either the heavy lead rounds of a Thedas-manufactured firelance, or the thin high velocity NATO rounds which most of my Earth weapons shot. Still, there were a lot of them, and they weren't very far away. I assume that they intended to get close enough to make crossbow shots a simple matter.

Ciara and Mariette didn't wait for my command to start killing, recognising the danger at once. Both took a knee by the cage edge, poking the barrels of their firelances between the bars, and started picking off the front rank as it formed up.

Ciara aimed for legs, preferring to disable her targets at vulnerable spots in the manner of a Dalish huntress, to be finished off later. Mariette aimed for centre mass, lethality being the tradition she had been trained to adhere to. The tracer rounds tore white lines in my artificial heat-vision as they shot out of the muzzles of the weapons and into the bodies of the guards.

Aoife and Briala joined in with their longbows too, threading the arrowheads through the bars before loosing, to good effect. Just not thirty rounds in less than a minute good, and that was with our two shooters taking their time to line up each shot.

To my dismay and exasperation, the soldiers of royalist Orlais continued marching towards us, to their death. Just as they had done at Sahrnia, Halamshiral, Lydes, Vindargent and a dozen other smaller battles. Except every step meant they were closer to the crossbows behind to skewer us with absolute certainty. Tick tock, goes the clock.

With no wish to feel how the front fabric of my own armour felt at that moment, that is to say perforated, I tapped Armen on the shoulder. The mage stopped his blowtorch magic and looked around curiously, wondering what I wanted. I didn't bother to inform him of what I wanted, and instead drove the full force of my body in a half run through a kick to the cage section he had been working on. As he had been almost done, only the bottom two crossbars remained in place, and bent outwards.

"Good work," I said to Armen, before stepping through the hole and making a break for the ledge of the nearest fountain. Crossbow bolts whistled by, from newly arrived soldiers spreading out atop the walls behind, the guards from other parts of the Palace arriving to join the fight. Mariette redirected her fire to tackle the new threat as I made it to the fountain and ducked, waiting for the attention to go to her before making my next move.

It took only a moment, luckily for everyone else in the cage as the enemy formation was getting dangerously close and its own archers were beginning to make speculative shots. A tentacle of fear moving through me, I abandoned the idea of being absolutely sure no one was waiting for me to pop my head up. Bolts were slapping against the cage near Ciara. Far too near.

I laid my weapon across the wet stone of the fountain's edge, taking aim, cold sweat making my neck feel freezing in the night air.

I joined the shooting. My bullets raked the heavily armoured, diminished mass of troops, a nearly continuous stream from the heavy firelance taking down half the remaining front in no time at all. The smell of gunfire and blood began to hang in the air, as we kept shooting at the now fleeing dregs of the enemy, Armen sending lightning bolts and fire at them for good measure.

The threat of taking a bolt myself disappeared, as the crossbowmen on the walls fled in utter terror. I am not sure if it was Armen's magic or my firelance that tipped them over the edge, but it didn't matter. They tossed aside their crossbows, falling into a complete rout.

The beachhead had been established.

"Armen, sorry to make you do all the heavy lifting," I said, to my sweating friend, "But if you would do the honours."

He nodded, took a deep breath to steady himself, and raised his staff over his head. It glowed, and burst forth a blinding white-green beam into the sky, a beacon.

I looked south, according to our agreement with Lord Clouet, and saw the answering beacon a minute later.

Green for go.

Clouet's army had successfully made his forced march from his fief in Midi, and Briala's guerrillas had eliminated all the enemy pickets so that it could be made undetected. I had been worried about discovery, because Clouet's forces were outnumbered by the besiegers of Halamshiral. Thankfully, that worry hadn't come to pass.

Soprano made her way through the eluvian and to me, a squad of firelancers in tow, gingerly climbing out of the cage via the hole.

"A cage?" she asked on approach, "How clever."

"Not clever enough," Louise de Villars replied, "Lord Clouet is in position. Your turn."

Soprano gave a nod and a smile, relishing the opportunity for combat to come. "We'll be up on the walls and in the palace in no time," she said, "And I'm sure Seryl's soldiers will shit themselves when they get a look at the Valo-Kas charging at them through the gate."

A sight I wouldn't be too glad to see myself. No doubt the confusion caused by the noise of our fight and the light of our magical beacons was spreading through the enemy's camp and siege lines. Not sure I would have stood and fought in similar circumstances, once I caught wind of a Qunari attack.

"Speaking of Lady Seryl," I said to the others, "Let's go get her. Change of plans, General. You have the command. Send your troops to the stables, around the palace. We're going straight through it, see if we can't end this ourselves before Clouet shows up to take any credit."

Not that it would matter, letting Clouet have the credit was the plan. But I still wanted to talk to Seryl first. I turned to our mage.

"And Armen, you keep out of the fighting," I said, "If Lady Seryl is hit, we might need you to stabilise her."

---

Thanks to our previous stay in the Winter Palace, we knew the superficial layout of the palace and grounds quite well even without Briala to lead us, but she knew ways that we hadn't discovered.

Austere servants' passageways were seemingly behind every wall, jarring the eyes compared with the stunning gilded opulence of the main corridors and rooms. They took us from the courtyard we had arrived at into the palace proper, through and towards the stables on the far side. We moved quickly but without expectation of combat; the servants weren't likely to help spirit Lady Seryl through the passages, and it was doubtful her guards could navigate them to begin with.

Soprano soon reported that her troops moving quietly along the wall had spotted the main siege camp. It was sited on the same field I had fought the Madame de Fer and the chevalier-Templar mixed contingent the summer before, right outside the gates from the stables.

Which wasn't good news, as if Seryl made it out into the camp, there wasn't a chance in hell of capturing her and her chances of escape rose considerably. I ordered the General and Shokrakar to get the troops moving faster, to ignore the greater possibility of being discovered in order to get into position more quickly.

Once that was done, I called a halt before we opened the next door and went to Briala. "Are we taking the most direct route?" I asked her, "The enemy camp is right outside the Highway Gate."

Briala screwed up her nose. "This is the least direct route, Marquis," she said, "But Seryl will have left behind guards to stop us from using the direct ways, which may prevent us from reaching the stables first."

"Guards we can deal with, Madame," Louise responded imperiously, nudging the hilt of her longsword in its scabbard with the flat of her palm pointedly, "Take us out of this maze back to familiar ground, now."

It was a command issued, one that brooked no disobedience. A strange but defiant look glazed over Briala's eyes in response, and I thought I might have to intervene to prevent bloodshed, moving my hand to my weapon again.

The former handmaiden thinned her lips into a sneer, the two points of her canines poking out from under them. "By your command, Lady Baroness," she said, with a mocking near-theatrical cursty. She walked to the nearest door as Louise fumed, her temper-driven response only partially quieted by a shake of the head from her more cool-headed cousin.

Briala slipped through to check the storeroom and concealed door leading back to the 'real' palace rooms, giving me the opportunity to try and cool things off.

"Easy," I said to Louise, as, "Try and understand where she's coming from. She's had people like you ordering her around for her entire life, and she's done with it."

"Yet I recall fighting for the liberty of elves this past year or more," Louise retorted with curled lip, "She has no right to talk to me like I'm some noble of the robe, disdaining her because of her pointed ears."

The nobles of the robe, the 'new money' nobility, that ran the bureaucracy of the Orlesian Empire were famously more disdainful of the elves and peasants than the chevalier classes, which was why Gaspard had any support among the lower classes at all. Needless to say, ancient chevalier families like Louise's own were far more disdainful of the new nobility. Although 'new' might still mean centuries old.

"Maybe so, cousin," Mariette said, "No one said her hostility was rational, only that it is the reality."

Louise turned her head, and likely would have said very unladylike things if she wasn't attempting to restrain herself. She had come a long way from questioning Soprano's right to command.

"If it helps make you feel better," Ciara chimed in, "I thought that was very rude too."

The ghost of a smile cracked under Louise's skull mask, but she hid it by walking through the open door. I pat Ciara on the shoulder, grinning at her myself.

"You done good," I said, before following the chevalier.

We spilled out onto the gilded halls once more, Briala waving us through to it having checked it herself. We continued the journey on the marble floor, dusty in this part of the palace from lack of care as those that used to polish it were now behind the walls of Halamshiral, and would sooner piss on it than clean it once more.

The guards predicted by Briala did not immediately materialise, to no one's surprise but hers. But we weren't just going to wait for them to do so.

I turned to our elven little sister once more.

"Ciara," I said, getting her attention, "Psy-Ops."

Matching the grin I had given her a minute previously, she pulled the music player from a pocket, the wires hanging from it. She turned it on from stand-by mode, its screen lighting up. She made her selection, the thing clicking as she moved down the list of songs. Most of our party looked at her like she had just descended from the heavens on a magic carpet.

Ciara tucked the device away again as the speakers hanging from her belt began to play her selection, hips swaying as the drums started the opening beat to Ballroom Blitz. I broke out into a laugh, unable to contain myself, as the others save for Armen went pale as ghosts with surprise.

It was an enjoyable sight, but as I said, we didn't have time to be screwing around.

"Forward!" I commanded, as the speakers boomed out Alright fellas, let's go!, "Double time!"

Briala broke into a sprint, although I could tell she didn't know what double time was, having enough on her plate to deal with. What with the hostile situation and advanced technology rearing their heads. We followed after her; Ciara, Mariette and I ahead, Louise, Aoife and Armen behind.

We ascended a staircase, bringing us finally back into a part of the palace I knew. The 'party' rooms that surrounded the main space were a different place to what I remembered. The furniture was covered up or missing, as were the artworks. Taken away for safekeeping, or taken to fund the war efforts, I didn't know. Considering most of it reappeared for the peace talks between Celene and Gaspard the year after, it's not too hard to guess now, but at the time it warmed my heart to see the royalty of Orlais so denuded of the visible signs of its wealth.

Still, we met no resistance and made it through to the main ballroom before Ciara's first song selection had even half-ended. Poetic, considering the song in question. Also, because this was the same ballroom we had once held prisoners of war in, and the same one in which the Orlesian Civil War would be ended. On terms that continue to baffle historians, but continue to amuse me.

The enemy were waiting for us there, in the dark.

It seems Mariette had wounded Lady Seryl very badly indeed. As we entered from the opposite side of the room, magical light was hovering around across from us, at the other side of the dancefloor. It blinded my vision via the goggles, which was strange, so I flipped my goggles up away from my eyes. In the bright white light, I could make out the figure of a noblewoman lying on the floor, crimson blood all over a gold-inlaid green nightdress, as a female hooded mage attempted to heal to her with both hands outstretched.

With them were three dozen armed persons, whom unlike those outside, had no armour at all. Most of them weren't even fully dressed, having donned whatever clothes were on hand, although all of them were masked and fully armed. Ornate swords, some of those present wearing two of them, and crossbows in the hands of the evident commoners in the ranks.

Chevaliers with their attendant men-at-arms. Seryl's personal guard. These men would be more crafty to defeat. Luckily, I didn't even need to issue orders, the people I had with me already knew exactly what to do. For the most part.

The cacophony of shouted warnings and weapons being drawn was interrupted by the unhesitating fire of Ciara and Mariette, casually stepping past Briala as she ducked behind a pillar and stepping to either side of the lower dancefloor, trying to cut off both possible escape routes. The chevaliers and their men-at-arms got moving quickly, trying to close in, as the mage and some human servants dragged Seryl's limp body carefully away towards the main doors to our left.

Ciara began to pick off all those she could see, leaning her weapon's barrel on the marble railing, cracking off single shots, beginning the reaping. Mariette on the other hand emptied her magazine, turning her firelance as it fired on full auto across the opposite gallery. It sent those she had targeted scurrying away in white-faced fear. At least, those that weren't wearing masks, and those that weren't hit by her shots, which was at least half the number Ciara was picking off.

"Fire discipline!" I roared at the harlequin, "Pick your targets!"

"That's no fun," Mariette replied with a faux pout, as she caught the empty mag dropping from her weapon.

Armen grinned up from beside me, his laughing eyes saying 'Maybe giving her the gun wasn't the best idea' and 'she really does like you' at the same time. I returned my attention to trying to glance around the pillar, rather than give him the satisfaction of knowing I had been annoyed.

Crossbow bolts whistled by my head, my heart jumping at the sound. Armen dived away somewhere, and I threw myself against the nearest pillar, glancing around it as one of the guards' bolts shot through one of the unlit glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The noise of its pieces clashing on the floor below set my teeth on edge. The shooting soon resolved that problem.

Julie and Tam are going to kill me, I thought. I had promised to keep out of harms way, after all. But the Rangers weren't exactly trained to take protected VIPs alive, and this was a golden opportunity.

None of the goings on seemed to bother Louise or Aoife. Not the crossbow bolts flying at random, shot blindly from around corners in the general direction of Ciara and Mariette's tracers, or the chevaliers advancing, using their lack of armour to move quickly between cover to get closer and closer to us. Our chevalier general and our Avvar warrior-woman charged around the marble towards the main doors, warcries rising from their throats, straight at the protection detail around Seryl.

It was a bold strategy, but one that relied on the rest of us shooters stopping the crossbow idiots from skewering the pair. I laid my own firelance on the marble enclosure of the dancefloor, and Briala appeared from her own cover, her bow drawn and a silverite-tipped arrow nocked. Very fancy, I thought idly for a split second, before putting my reticles on the position of the first target.

As Louise and Aoife began a moving melee to our left, we shot those not near them to pieces. Mariette stopped having fun, and joined Ciara and I in carefully shooting anything in between us and the crossbows, causing the marble and softer white stone of the facades to disintegrate. Seeing the power of our weapons, the archers began to flee, just in time for our lone archer to put arrows through their backs, falling at the feet of the people moving Seryl.

As Ciara's loudspeakers began pumping out Fox on the Run, barely audible over the gunfire if at all, the dozens that opposed us had dropped to less than ten.

Briala, for the record, is the fastest archer I've ever seen with the exception of the Inquisitor, and perhaps the most accurate excepting Lady Nightingale. Ciara was impressed with her, I could tell. Not sure I liked that very much, but still.

The mixture of chevalier skill and mountain-tribe barbarity charing at them left the remaining defending force of chevaliers on on the back foot, simply because the difference between Louise and Aoife in terms of style was sky and earth. They double teamed the royalist chevaliers one-by-one, as the others were unable to come to the aid of their comrades due to having to avoid the wrath of our firepower.

Louise acted as the anvil, catching the first blows of the opponent with the great experience and training she had collected since she was twelve years old. Aoife acted as the hammer, encroaching on the fight in a tidal wave of blows at every opportune moment.

I caught onto this choreography with some astonishment. Louise de Villars had spent much of her life fighting Avvars. Likewise, Aoife had spent most of hers fighting knights. It is even possible that they had fought each other before my arrival, although it is unlikely as the Orlesian and Fereldan Avvar clans tended to keep to their own sides of the border.

Despite the surprise, I was very glad for the progress.

"Get after them!" I said, once I was sure the crossbows were no longer a problem, "Seryl's getting away!"

Ciara and Mariette broke off running at once, reloading as they moved, while I cracked off a few more bullets over the heads of the healer beyond, trying to distract the mage and the servants, to make them duck so that we might buy the time necessary to put them into our hands.

No joy there.

The entire party sped up all of a sudden, the healer satisfied that Seryl could be moved or the Lady herself ordering them to do so, leaving two chevaliers behind to try and deal with Louise and Aoife. The two put up a much better fight than the others, as we could no longer shoot at them without hitting our own. Seryl and her entourage disappeared behind the heavy blue-painted oak doors, and the sound of the key being turned in the equally heavy locking mechanism echoed as loud as my footsteps on the approach.

By the time I got over there with Briala and Armen, Louise was delivering the coup de grace on her opponent and Aoife was already giving her own a cursory looting, pulling off the gilded mask with aplomb and shoving it into a leather bag hanging from a shoulder strap.

"Any way around this?" I asked our elvhen guide.

"None that would get us there in time," Briala replied.

"Can you blow it away?" I asked Armen.

"Probably," Armen said, "But the blast would likely engulf the palace in flames."

And burning down a cultural treasure of the Orlesian Empire was not a propaganda victory we wished to hand to Celene.

"Fuck," I said. The only other option was extremely expensive. But I'd already risked my ass and the trust of my beloveds to get this particular bitch we were chasing, so expensive would have to do.

"Hold your fire," I said, as I levelled my firelance at the door. No need to make this stupidly expensive either.

I shot thirty bullets into and around the lock in bursts, the gilded iron parts holding up far less than the oak around it. The lock seemed to shatter under the force, but still remained jammed inside the wood. Pissed that I hadn't got the job done despite the investment of my irreplaceable bullet supply, I grit my teeth and waved Louise and Aoife over to me.

"On three, we kick it down," I said, "We'll do the kicking. Mariette, Ciara, be ready to cover us."

Needless to say, Louise, Aoife and I had considerably more mass than Ciara or Briala, and mass was what we needed.

The countdown proceeded, and as one, we kicked the doors, myself directly at the seam between them right below the lock, Aoife and Louise to either side of me. The lock tore itself out of the pocked wood, and the doors opened slightly. Enough for us to shove them aside.

Beyond was the Vestibule, the antechamber and staircase leading to the grand entrance of the palace, and thus to the main gardens and the stables. The space around us was dark except for moonlight coming in through the windows at the other end of the room, but that was enough to know that the main doors were closed.

I swore like Paulie Walnuts on his worst day, sailor that he was, thinking that we were up shit creek without a paddle. The ballroom doors were strong, but the main ones were a whole lot stronger. Getting through them would take too long, and Lady Seryl would be long gone.

But then the crackle of firelances, blackpowder ones, sounded from outside.

"Looks like General Soprano is making good progress," Armen said cheerily, brushing marble dust off the shoulder of his kevlar, "Or sounds like it, to be exact."

"Let's go see," I said, "Ciara, turn the music off."

Little Sister did as she was told, and we hurried down the stairs as a single group, weapons at the ready. The sounds of battle were intensifying, and not only because we were getting closer to the action. I pulled my goggles over my eyes again, signalling for the others to do the same.

The main doors weren't locked, and I thanked the Maker Almighty for that mercy. Seryl's people must not have had the time to lock it, or perhaps it didn't have a key to begin with.

We exited quietly, Mariette going first and taking up a position under the balcony that overhung the doorway, Briala close behind. The rest of us hung back, out of the weak moonlight coming through the clouds, watching the scene of madness in front of us. I pulled off my goggles for a moment to watch it.

The best way to describe the whole thing is that we greatly underestimated our Tal-Vashoth friends. They had beaten us to the front courtyard, by a mere minute or two if the utter chaos that was unfolding before us was any clue.

Individual melees were breaking out all over the space; in the little gardens, on the balconies, even in the water of the fountains that still merrily flowed. Vashoth in heavy plate armour versus an incredible array of men-at-arms and chevaliers in brightly coloured tabards, all lit up by magical light. Our mercenaries moved in from the right, from the direction I had sent them around the palace. Lady Seryl must have got word to her army's camp, because her own troops were streaming in from the gates leading to the Imperial Highway.

In the centre of this, at the bottom of the wide stairs leading to the palace, was the fight that really mattered.

Karaas and Herah Adaar versus Lady Seryl's mage and the few guards she had kept with her. Large qunari in black clothes, grey armour and red vitaar, against highly skilled chevaliers wearing the green mountain lion of Jader, with the hooded mage trading magical blows with Karaas, her robes revealed to be a dark green with a red lining on the edges of the hood and cuffs.

The littered bodies of her personal attendants attested to her failure to reach her own army in time, the poor souls killed by electrical magic by the webbed scarring of their skin. They had just gotten in the way of the shots, the positions of their bodies clearly showing that they had been outside the protection of their mage's barriers.

The Lady herself was on the ground, sitting up on one elbow, her back towards us, as she watched the fight unfolding beside her with the faint glow of the barrier around her.

I wasn't sure I was glad to see this or unhappy. The damned Valo-Kas had beat us to the punch, which wasn't simply a matter of pride but one of practicality too. If they caught Seryl, they'd likely demand a price for her head, and not a small one. The losses they were taking would likely add to it, and the losses would grow heavier the longer the fight went on, as they hadn't opted to stay in formation as they had when they had confronted us at their base in Valhalla. More immediately, every man or woman they lost in this fight was one that we couldn't deploy in a later battle.

"What do we do?" Aoife asked in confusion. I turned to her, and saw that everyone was just as astonished as I was at the development.

"Wade in," I replied with reluctance, "We need to get to the Lady before the Valo-Kas are overwhelmed, or worse, if they take her for ransom. Maybe we can even haul her up onto her feet to show her troops. Get them to surrender. Close formation. Louise and Aoife, protect Ciara and Mariette. Armen, stay with me, keep the barriers up. I know you're tired, but..."

"I've got enough energy left for that," Armen interrupted. I gave a thumbs up, and reloaded my weapon.

"Let's go," Louise said gravely, adjusting her skull mask. Blondie was rearing to go.

I grunted an affirmative response, and the group pulled back to form into the schiltron; Aoife and Louse in front and centre, Ciara and Mariette on the wings where they could step in behind the front two as required, myself and Briala in the absolute rear with Armen in the middle.

We stepped out, weapons ready. No one seemed to notice us as we padded down the stairs, the noise of battle echoing around the courtyard augmented by the churning water of the fountains and those fighting in among them.

The Valo-Kas threw themselves into battle with complete abandon, seeming to enjoy the slaughter, all discipline they had displayed to us before completely gone. I felt cold settle at the bottom of my stomach, a regret that we hadn't opted to pinch them off before I had seen this. Tam had warned repeatedly of the barbarity of her people when they lacked a code to follow, and the fear growing in me as I saw them tear apart the conscripted Orlesian peasants was that we could not control them. They didn't appear to be able to control themselves.

"Where the fuck is Soprano?" I thought aloud, looking to my left, to the western side of the palace. She should have been arriving at that point. That would restore order quickly, even if we didn't get to Seryl in time. Karaas waved his bladed-staff around in a pirouette repeatedly, slamming lightning bolts into the barriers of the mage standing between him and the Lady, clearly having the better of that fight. His sister Herah was far less lucky, having to fight off three chevaliers at once and was barely holding her own. I wanted to help out, but her fight was a whirl of manoeuvres, and I couldn't get a shot.

The descent down the stairs went unopposed; those on the balconies to either side of us were busy with each other, and none of Seryl's people had yet made their way past the Valo-Kas.

My four companions in front moved past Seryl, sending her shaking with fear, and formed a semi-circle facing the fight to shield her from it. I stepped up, looking down at her, brown eyes framed with greying brown hair staring back at me. A soft noblewoman in a blood-soaked nightgown, at first glance. But this was not who the woman was by all accounts. It was hard to tell if she was acting or if she had genuine fear that all the harm she had done in her life had finally caught up with her.

"Lady Seryl," I said, as Armen stooped beside her to inspect her wounds, "By order of the Trojan Republic, I place you under arrest for crimes against humanity."

Seryl smiled, and wiped her eyes of tears. "You won't get the pleasure, Marquis," she replied gravely in Common, "This wound cannot be healed. Forty years of assassination attempts and Orlesian court life, I survive. Two of your little bullets do what the most accomplished bards or the most angry of mobs cannot. Congratulations, you've killed me."

That was annoying. The everything-goes-right plan was to bring Seryl to answer publicly for her crimes, a demonstration of the merits of due process. But it was only a mild irritation. The High-Chancellor's preferences had only a secondary place on a battlefield, where combat conditions dictated our actions by necessity.

I looked at Armen. "I've seen Markham pull people back from the absolute brink of death," I said to him, "Is she telling the truth?"

"Smell that?" Armen replied, holding up two fingers he had swabbed across the wound, "It's bile, not just blood. She's been shot in the liver, maybe the kidneys too. At least one bullet is still in there. Markham might be able to cut her open without killing her, but I can't, and healing her stitches the flesh back together. Every time she moves, the bullets rip up her insides again in different ways, spreading the germs."

There was indeed a different tang to the blood than usual.

"Can't you just heal her up and keep her still?" I asked, "We can get Markham here inside an hour, quicker even." Eluvians are convenient like that.

Armen shook his head. "Maybe, but she'd likely die of the fevers," he replied, before he clarified in Earthling terms, "Infection. Liver and kidney wounds don't heal properly, unless they're very very lucky."

I shook my head, rubbing my face. There was nothing for it.

"Well then, any last requests?" I said with utmost seriousness to Seryl, "Order your people to surrender, and I might just grant one."

"My daughter," Seryl said immediately, "Save her from that Qunari brute. Let her go free with my personal retinue."

I felt my eyebrows raised up as high as they could go with the surprise. She had put some thought into that request. Clearly she thought this might be the result.

"Who's your daughter?" I asked.

"Lady Seryl doesn't have a daughter," Mariette chimed in, keeping her eye and firelance on the fighting ahead, "A couple of useless sons. One dead at Vindargent, the other drinking himself into a stupor in Nevarra." No wonder she was so opposed to us, I thought.

"She's a bastard," Seryl said, increasingly in a panic, "The mage fighting the Qunari. Hurry!"

I turned my head to look at the fight, and found Karaas in the final stages of slapping down Baby Seryl. The magical exchange was now very obviously in the Vashoth's favour, the fiery replies to the lightning growing weaker with each salvo. The human mage's hood had fallen down, and the same long brown hair as her mother fell out, without the grey streaks.

"Oh shit," I said, "Armen, keep the prisoner alive. Ciara, Louise, with me."

We went straight towards Karaas and Herah. This time, there was resistance. A group of spearmen in chainmail came at us, at last realising at last that the perimeter they had set up around their liege-lady had been breached, that we weren't there to protect her. They came charging at us like demons, seemingly infected with the same bloodlust that the Valo-Kas had brought with them.

Bloodlust doesn't beat firelances. Ciara and I cut them down expertly, only one making it close enough for Louise to dispatch with a single sword stroke to the back of the neck, half-decapitating the opponent. She shoved the falling, spurting victim to the ground, clearing the way for me to take the lead.

Baby Seryl spotted me, and keeping her hand on her own nondescript staff, she flicked a fireball straight at me. A pathetic thing compared with the napalm bubbles Armen could summon when he applied himself, but one that would have definitely discouraged an ordinary person. Naturally, the magic had no effect on me. She didn't notice, simply assuming that it would be enough to deal with me. Big mistake.

I walked right up to Baby Seryl, grabbed her by the scruff of the robe and slapped aside her staff. My immunity to her talents was only a surprise for a moment before a small flicker of recognition went over her face. Then the iron of defiance set in across her face. How annoying.

"That's enough of that," I said, pulling the young woman in my grasp along, "Your Mama made a deal. Your life for a surrender."

Baby Seryl said nothing, she just flipped her hood up and craned her neck to look over at her mother as I frogmarched her back. She knew well enough not to resist seriously, only enough to maintain some dignity.

Karaas just stood there, watching, leaning on his staff. He hadn't fallen to bloodlust, it seemed, uniquely among his fellow Vashoth. Curious, I thought.

I stopped near the chevaliers, Herah still fought on, despite sending a glance our way, almost as an acknowledgement.

I cleared my thoat loudly, which only one of the chevaliers could hear over the running battles around us and Ciara cracking off a few shots at another group of Orlesian men-at-arms attempting to intervene.

"We have Lady Seryl!" I shouted, the chevaliers' masks turning to me, "You've lost! It's over!" I pointed back to where Mariette and Aoife were guarding the woman in question. Two of the chevaliers backed off. The third deflected Herah's final blow, before she backed off herself, hissing with frustration. That one definitely had the bloodlust.

"You're no fun!" Herah Adaar declared, pointing her blade at me, splattered with gore. Her brother quickly intercepted her before she could act on her obvious impulse to have fun regardless, likely as he had been watching Mariette and Ciara end interferences with great ease using similar weapons to the one hanging on my chest. Pleased there was someone with sense, I nodded my appreciation for his restraint to him as they came along with us.

We moved back to the Lady, the chevaliers relieved of their weapons for the moment. Daughter ran to comfort mother, and join in the attempt to keep the latter alive. Tears now streamed from both sets of brown eyes. It's moments like that where you have to bite down a lot of sympathy for your enemy, as the humanity of them often tempts you to do things contrary to your interests or safety. Though it's also important not to bite down too hard.

"My lady, we..." started one of the chevaliers as we arrived.

"There's nothing you could have done," Seryl replied, before pointing off behind Armen, "Look. Even if you had beaten back the Qunari..."

Finally, Soprano's first regiment made an appearance. Two companies moved along the walls, rushing to form up, to level their firelances down at the fight by the ranks. The rest of her brigade marched smartly through the western archways, entering in good order with firelances shouldered and bayonets fixed.

The chaotic fighting began to subside, as both the Valo-Kas and the Orlesians began to understand that the newcomers were entirely unwilling to join in the idiocy. A walking wall of silverite. I could make out blood splatters on some of the uniforms, courtesy of the artificial magical light. Soprano must have run into resistance near the main barracks.

Soprano herself was atop the wall with her advance companies, my UN beret perched on her head, looking down at the unravelling brawl below with what I can only describe as contempt. I adjusted my radio to the command channel, glad to see her.

"General, just in time," I said, "We have Lady Seryl. If they start fighting again, shoot them." Not specifying exactly who to shoot, so that the Adaars got the picture. They did indeed, and Karaas ran off to stop his fellow mercenaries from starting shit up again. Whereas Herah just looked at me like I was a complete bore.

"With pleasure, my lord," Soprano replied sharply, "I don't suppose you know how it became like this? Never mind, they're mercenaries. I think I know already." And with that succinct comment, she began directing her troops to move forwards carefully. The firelances came off the shoulders of the troops in a single motion, and into their hands, held at the ready for either firing or use of the bayonets. The drums beat the slow march and the platoons advanced, which resulted in both of the other combatant parties backing off away from the advance at equal speed.

"Remy, you best tell our people to lay down arms," Seryl said, with heavy breath, "Unless I am mistaken, there will be another army arriving soon from the south to surround us. You should stop the mobilisation before more people are killed. It is over." She had understood the meaning of the beacons. She also got the message that she was beaten in practical terms. A fight on two fronts, against gaatlok and mages.

"You are not mistaken," Armen chipped in, providing the last straw, "Lord Clouet is close at hand."

Seryl nodded gravely. She had more troops than Clouet did, of course, but she assumed that we had reinforced him with our own, via the eluvians. I certainly would have in her place.

Remy, the largest of the three chevalier retainers, gave the closed-fist salute and ran off, barking at groups of surviving Orlesian soldiers and his fellow nobles to gather at the gate leading out of the palace grounds. It completed the de-escalation of the situation, as word spread that Seryl had been captured. Without her, the chevaliers would not fight and the conscripts had nothing to fear. Even if she died, her formal heir was not on hand to take up the fight.

"

"You will keep your word?" Seryl continued, "You will let my daughter escape with my retainers to protect her?"

"But I don't want..." the daughter began, weeping.

"You have to," Seryl said, soothingly, "This wound is fatal, my child. You must go to the Empress. She can protect you, and you can help her get justice for this disgrace."

"Not likely," I interrupted flatly, "And if I find out you're involved in any act of the Orlesian state that results in the deaths of Trojan citizens, there is no place on Thedas you can hide from our wrath. Hell, I'll personally hunt you down." My patience for personal vendettas was thin enough as it is.

Angry young eyes looked up at me. I'd seen the look before, on other faces. Baby Seryl was barely twenty, if even that. She wasn't the youngest to wear that expression in front of me either.

"Must you always be such a..." Lady Seryl started.

"Yes, I must," I interrupted again, pointing my firelance at her before thinking better of it, "You're a mass murderer, my lady. By the traditions of your own kind, I ought to kill you right here. But I am not your kind, as you so helpfully pointed out before de Villars shot you."

"I thought I recognised her," Seryl said, her tone as cold as ice, "You have defectors from both sides of the war. What do you think that says about your cause?"

The leader of the elven resistance scoffed loudly, and rightly so. It was a ridiculously detached statement for Seryl to have made, especially in front of Briala.

"What do you think it says about yours?" Briala said, "Or the war itself? They would rather fight for us at every turn, if it wasn't for your executioners or bribes."

"If I wanted the opinion of a maidservant," Seryl retorted, not sparing the elf a single whisper of a look, "I would have asked for it."

The 'maidservant' slung her bow, nonplussed by the accusation. A feat of self control, or perhaps, self assurance.

"Yes, I am from what you consider low origins," Briala replied calmly, "But I have confounded both Celene and Gaspard for months, despite both knowing about the eluvians. I brought those that Gaspard exiled back to free Halamshiral and punish you. And I will free all my people from the tyranny of the Empire."

"She's not a maidservant any more," I added with a frown, turning to Armen, "You'd think a dying woman would have better manners." I was getting offended on Briala's behalf, or bemused that Lady Seryl hadn't read the writing on the wall for the discriminatory bullshit she was spouting.

The mage shrugged. "She's got nothing to lose," Armen said, "Unless you're going to hurt her daughter over an insult."

Which I wasn't, and the disgust on my face happily made that apparent.

"Oh, it'll take days for me to die like this," Lady Seryl said, "Days of unpleasant, heated pain throughout my entire body. I have seen people die like this before. Why should I spare you my scorn, when it is you who has done this to me?"

"Because you did this to yourself," Ciara replied harshly, before I could even formulate a response, "When you attacked your own people, simply for wanting a better life, this was always going to be the result. Maybe not at their hands, or our hands, but someone would have killed you in a nasty way."

That seemed to hit home. Our prisoner at least considered her vassals to be 'her' people, the human ones at the very least.

"I did what was necessary," Lady Seryl replied, "Nothing more, nothing less."

"What you did was evil," I said.

"So I should have allowed my family and household to be ripped apart by an angry mob?" Seryl said, "Robbed, raped and beaten?! That was the way things would have turned out! And you know it!" Her words rang a little hollow, leaving us without words to reply with.

The exchange ended there. She had the good grace to at least seem ashamed of the accusation's truth. She hung her head and closed her eyes, her daughter gingerly embracing her. Tears spilled down her face, silently. Her daughter hugged her, moving close to do so without causing her pain or fully reopening her wound.

Even I felt a pang of … something at the sight of it, though I was careful to maintain cool detachment on my face as best as I could. We knew the brutalities that politics brought on people, the ferocity of the hatreds it stirred. Lady Seryl maybe had a soul after all.

But then again, Lady Seryl was by all accounts also the greatest actress playing the Orlesian Game.

---

Lord Clouet's forces and Briala's guerrillas arrived shortly afterwards, as Lady Seryl's troops stacked their arms and armour in piles in camp. Much of the ordinary soldiery was far more glad to be doing that than fighting us, and not just because they would have been in serious danger of dying. The same forces that had propelled Free Orlais into existence were still on the move in the rest of the Empire, to the point that both Celene and Gaspard had been forced to make promises about how things would be governed. Nothing hugely radical of course, but an end to the more egregious noble privileges in some regions was not radical, even back then.

The chevaliers were far more of a problem. Many of them had refused to stand down, especially those outside the gates, where Shokrakar had taken a group of her own troops before we took Lady Seryl. They saw the writing on the wall and feared retribution for the generations of oppression they had imposed on the Dales, not least from the elves. Shokrakar slaughtered those that refused surrender, albeit at great cost and not out of any political motive. She was still fighting when Clouet arrived with his forward cavalry units.

The Baron du Midi was the formal victor of the battle, as agreed between himself, Briala and Velarana. When word of the action would be spread, it was Henri Clouet who would be spoken of as the victor. This was important, because his status and legitimacy would be required for the next step; naming him under the auspices of our Republic and placing him in governorship of the County of Jader as a province of the same. Assuming Admiral Fisher's part in our plan went smoothly.

So, Lady Seryl formally handed her sword to him, and not me, with Markham by her side, as I insisted that we at least try to save her life. Our foremost healer more or less confirmed what both Armen and Seryl herself had said; she would die within days. I elected to allow her to stay in the Winter Palace for that time, her bodyguards and daughter with her, under the guard of the Valo-Kas.

In the mean time, we had two tasks at hand.

The first was the stripping of the Winter Palace of valuables. We had seized the royal treasuries during our first occupation, but did not have the time to gut the rooms and libraries of anything else. In fact, we were only in the process of cataloguing everything at the time of Lydes, the point being to preserve the necessary dignity of the palace for use as the legislature of the future Orlesian state, and get every last sovereign out of the unnecessary pieces. This time however, we were more like locusts. Leha made an appearance through the eluvian with half her finance department staff, and she gleefully ignored me and took to the matter with her usual greed-motivated enthusiasm.

The second was a much more delicate thing; meeting with the people inside the walls of Halamshiral itself. The citizens, and the small garrison we had left behind to guard them. I was not looking forward to it. After all, we had effectively abandoned them to their fate, and I was under no illusions that they would forgotten it.

So I decided to wait for reinforcements to come in the morning. Namely Julie, Tam and Aurelia.

Julie to apologise, Tam to show that our abandonment of Orlais had not come without a cost, and Aurelia to provide an 'outside' perspective on our plan.

I waited until the next morning to send for them, because they had enough on their respective plates without me dragging them out of bed and across hundreds of miles just for a negotiation. Plus, we were a whole lot less likely to get shot at in the day, as the Halamshiral garrison likely didn't know who had attacked the Winter Palace and the siege camps.

I met the three at the eluvian, leaving everyone else in the previous night's assault group to their long morning sleep. They had earned it. The sun was still low when Aurelia stepped through the magical portal from the Crossroads, my two wives following close behind. All three were dressed formally for the occasion, as was the honour guard of Rangers that would be accompanying us, bearing the flags of Free Orlais and my personal United Nations standard.

Julie in a red and blue gown, unarmed. Tam in a Grey Wardens tunic and cloak with silver braid, armed with her dagger alone. Aurelia in a dress with a wide skirt, in deep Tevene black, as was her heavy eye shadow, her naginata in hand.

I hugged all three in turn as they arrived to greet them. "Thanks for coming," I said, "Velarana said to meet with the garrison and the townspeople, but that's not my thing."

"With any luck, she doesn't know we're here," Julie said cheerily, "I would complain that you interrupted my sleep, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up."

"She's eager to talk to Halamshiral before Velarana does," Tam clarified with false weariness, "To get them on the Libertarian side."

"Without awareness that they probably blame her for the exile," Aurelia added, shouldering her naginata, "And you."

I nodded in agreement. "Yeah, that's why I don't want to go across there alone," I said, "Besides me not being a diplomat."

"That you most certainly are not," Aurelia smiled, "Though you do not need to be one."

"This one prefers the bloodstained conquerer image," Tam said to me with a wink, thumbing at the magister as she passed by, "We should get this over with. The longer we wait, the more anxious the people will be." Julie laughed as we got moving, probably because Tam's remark was playing into the stereotypes about Tevinter mages.

"He is a bloodstained conquerer," Aurelia objected over Julie's amusement, "And he ought to embrace that. You cannot play the noble hero and win." I grumbled, very much disagreeing. Aurelia flashed a grin at me, knowing I was.

"On that we are agreed," Julie replied, "But he can remain the hero, while I make the necessary decisions. Which is why I agreed to come here. Let's go."

So we were escorted through the gardens around the palace, along the route that Soprano's brigade had taken to get to the main gate courtyard. Evidence of battle damage was everywhere; statues smashed or pockmarked with the marks of firelance volleys, stains of gore in lines testifying to where a line of battle once stood.

Even the royal bathhouse, famous in Orlais for its hot springs and beauty treatments, was shambles, apparently having been the scene of a close-in fight with bayonets. Soprano's report had blamed it for her delay in reaching the gates the night before, as it was an ideal spot for crossbow troops to cover the grounds behind it. The water in the baths was a opaque pink shade and foamy. I cringed as we travelled through, hoping that there weren't bodies at the bottom of them.

Soprano met us at the gates, to update us on the situation across the causeway to the city. The garden space was being filled up with golden and silver objects, statues, artworks and books. Leha wasn't in sight, but her administrators certainly were.

A very bored Shokrakar was hanging around nearby, half asleep as she lay back on a long stone bench without the armour I had only ever seen her in. The lack of it didn't seem to remove the feeling you had of being in the presence of a giantess. A hungover giantess, in this case.

"General," Julie greeted Soprano, her eyes lingering a little on the UN beret, "How goes your day?"

"Busy, Marquise," Soprano replied politely, "The palace is big, and there's a lot to pull out. I saw many of the treasures before, but I still cannot believe how much wealth the aristos have just lying around."

"Careful, General," Aurelia said playfully, "You're beginning to sound like an Aequitarian."

"And you still sound like a magister, madame," Soprano replied, with far less amusement.

"That is suitable because I am one," Aurelia replied, not losing her lighthearted tone, "And shall be the mother to many."

Soprano just stared back, like this wasn't good news. Which in fairness, it probably wouldn't have been without other events, considering the kids were going to be walking strategic armaments. With my other kids acting as the safety keys.

"Enough of that," Tam groaned, her patience with Aurelia running thin, "Have the garrison attempted to contact us?"

"No, Warden-Commander," Soprano replied, putting her hands behind her back, "We flew our banners as ordered at sunrise, but there has been no response. Well, almost. The troops at the opposite gatehouse have been reinforced."

"They think it's a trick," I concluded.

"I believe so, my lord," Soprano said, "Given the potential costs to Lady Seryl's forces in taking the city and her reputation for subterfuge, it is a good conclusion on their part. The man Mike left in control is a stubborn one to boot."

"Then there's nothing else for it," I said, "We'll have to go out onto the causeway and get their attention."

"And hope that the shooters aren't jumpy enough to shoot first, ask questions later," Julie shrugged, turning to Soprano, "Thank you, General. We'll work it out."

Soprano saluted Julie, like she was still the Chancellor. "The way is clear, Marquise."

We moved on, towards the arch of the gateway leading to the causeway, the same one where Ciara accepted the surrender of Comte Montclair. Shokrakar gave a wave as we passed, only barely paying attention. The Valo-Kas had made up for us stopping them slaughtering the royalists by having a huge party in the ballroom, drinking a good proportion of the wine cellar throughout the rest of the night. We had suffered so few casualties, and the Valo-Kas honoured their own dead in this manner by tradition, so I had allowed it.

We broke out onto the causeway as a group, and into the firing line of the Halamshiral garrison. It was warm in the sunlight, and the strong breeze that caught the flags being carried behind us also brought the smells of early spring in the Eastern Dales, from the hills and forests around the city. I felt a wave of an unusual guilty nostalgia, as if some divine being were reminding us of what we had surrendered to Gaspard.

At once, there was movement on the crenellations of the gatehouse to the city, crossbow troops (inevitably) moving to shooting positions. The unintelligible sound of shouted commands rang out, more so as we approached the mid-point. To my ear, I thought they were restraining the troops rather than commanding them to be ready.

Good news, I thought, as a bolt whirred in front of us, ricocheted diagonally away from us on a cobblestone and skittered along the edge of the fence-wall beside. I had to stop myself reaching for my firelance and commanding the others to withdraw, the shot had been that close.

"Putain de merde!" Julie exclaimed, before raising her voice to maximum volume, "We're your allies, you morons!" No shout came back, but they definitely heard her.

No other bolts came flying, telling us that it had been a nervous shooter or someone had ordered a halt to any shooting before it could begin properly. We continued on our way, with more speed and attention paid this time.

We were repaid for the insult with the sound and sight of the portcullis opening, the metallic clanking of the gears being turned echoing through the stone, as armed people began showing up behind it. Weapons held at rest, eyes open with curiosity or disbelief, no sign of either formation or discipline. Militia, I thought. Armed civilians.

As we approached, the incredulity seemed to increase, both on the faces of the civvies and by volume of their chattering, which began in earnest almost as soon as the portcullis had stopped moving above us. Helped by the fact that more kept streaming down the narrow stairways to either side of the main path, seemingly to gawk.

Thankfully, some semblance of order began to assert itself as six or seven uniformed Free Army soldiers came down the stairs after the mob, armed with firelances no less. One officer and a squad of enlisted personnel.

"Bonjour, mes camarades," Julie said, a bright smile on her face and a glow in her emerald eyes, "You have... no idea how good it is to see you all, alive and well." Her attitude and demeanour began to melt some of the hearts, but before the effect could spread far, a voice rang out from the crowd.

"The surprise is shared by us, Madame Chancellor," said the officer as he emerged from the crowd, without much warmth, "We never thought we would see you again."

He was of average height, dressed in the Free Army green with gold tabs on his collar to indicate his rank, that of captain. His eyes were almond-shaped and dark, almost black, and his hair was an almost equally dark brown.

I recognised the man as the one Mike had appointed to lead the garrison, and train up volunteers. His lack of warmth was shared by much of the crowd, although not all of them, but he clearly commanded their respect. Their eyes had turned to him as soon as he began to speak, without exception, and they had let him pass to the front with great deference.

He had saved them from both Celene and Gaspard, I realised, and they knew it.

We had to show him every respect if we had any hope of convincing the populace to come along with our plan. On the flip side, if we could convince him of our case, the others would follow easily. So I dredged his name and rank from my memory, no easy feat given that he was not a senior officer, and stepped forward.

"Captain le Carré, we have defeated the army of Lady Seryl and taken her a prisoner," I said, as much as an announcement to the crowd as a reply to his comment, "We're here to get you out of harm's way and … explain our actions this past winter."

"Not explain," Tam cut in, "Apologise, pray that you can forgive us, and offer you a way to avoid the rest of the war."

Le Carré examined me with a cool eye, and scanned the others too, seemingly deciding after a minute to hear us out. Albeit not actually saying so, just leaving an awkward silence before plowing forwards.

"You left us behind, to face death and worse," he said, "You didn't even attempt to warn us of Gaspard's approach from the south. We barely had time to bring in the supplies for winter, we could have starved, if Gaspard had not betrayed Celene."

"He was always going to," I replied, "He told us as much. But admittedly, you could not have known that. I assume by now you know of the deal we made with the Grand Duke?"

"I know, and I might be more understanding..." le Carré said, "But what I cannot understand is how it came to that. The Free Army could have beaten Gaspard de Chalons. It could have broken the siege of Hearth, and driven the enemy back. If anything, that siege should have been the end of Gaspard. Instead, it was an ignoble defeat for us."

He had believed the myth of our invincibility as much as any of us, and he hadn't been present for the fighting retreat from Lydes. His confusion as to how it could have come to defeat was understandable.

"He does not know," Aurelia stated, "He doesn't know about the threat the Grand-Duke made. Not surprising, I doubt he made the full terms of the agreement public and news is difficult to get with siege lines around the city."

Le Carré's gaze turned on Aurelia like a battery of cannon. "Who are you?" he asked, "And to what are you referring?"

"My apologies, I thought my identity was obvious," Aurelia said, genuinely apologetic, "I am Aurelia Tiberia Valentina, Colonel of the Foreign Legion of the Free Army. And lawful wife of the Marquis de la Fayette."

Tam snorted, at the last sentence in particular. The crowd actually gasped with surprise. No doubt word had gotten to them about the Tevinter offer by now, and the famed Tevinter bride offered as the price for our rescue from Ferelden. Aurelia seemed to puff up with pride that she had caused such a reaction among the soporati. I felt the stares of the crowd acutely, as the reality of my position settled in among them.

"Putting aside that nonsense..." le Carré stated flatly, "What could possibly have possessed you, Lady Marquise, to accept such a deal from Gaspard? Leaving Orlais and allowing him to pass to Halamshiral unmolested, in return for the safety of the Eastern Dales? There was no way of holding him to that!"

"He threatened to hold his army at Hearth for as long as possible," Julie explained, her tone more pleading than before, "Boxing us in while his chevaliers roamed the countryside; robbing, raping and murdering as many people as they could find. There was no way that we could have broken the siege and his army in time to stop the deaths of tens of thousands. Possibly more."

"Nor did she take the decision herself," Tam added, far less pleadingly, "She presented the deal to the National Assembly, as she was compelled to by law. Gaspard put a short time limit for us to consider the deal. The Assembly agreed. Most of the representatives weren't from Hearth, their own families were in danger, and the deal was the only way to save those lives."

"And my soldiers are compelled to follow the command of the Assembly," I said, throwing in, "Our Army is not a law onto itself." Words I should have heeded soon afterwards, but the circumstances were even more dire to cause me to have forgotten.

Le Carré considered the words, his nose wrinkled and his head dipped. Julie didn't wait for him. She rushed forwards and took his hands in hers. His head snapped up again at once.

"Captain, I swear to you, that agreement was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life," she said, loud enough for all to hear, "I lost my position as High Chancellor, I lost the home I was raised in and the home I had made with the Marquis and Tam, and I almost lost all hope of ever living in a world where we don't have to worry about chevaliers roaming through the countryside, taking what they want and killing who they please."

Le Carré seemed taken aback by her frankness, his brow raised high and his eyes wide.

"But there is hope, Captain," Julie continued, releasing his hands, " Our dream is not dead. We are building a new city, far from Gaspard or Celene. As we speak, our navy is liberating Jader. So we are not just offering you a chance to join us once more, but a way to stay and fight if you wish, with our full support."

All of a sudden, Le Carré softened up towards Julie, losing his hard edge at once. His back, arrow-straight until then, suddenly relaxed a half inch, as if he had received a command to be at ease. She had said something he approved of, or sympathised with. I smirked, her powers of persuasion no less impressive than they had been before.

"You have proposals," Le Carré said, "I would hear them, before you take them to the Defence Council."

Julie smiled, unguarded this time as she was getting her way. "Sam tells me that Halamshiral is too difficult to defend," she said, "And with Gaspard and Celene's armies in the field everywhere, re-establishing Free Orlais within its former territory will be impossible. At least, this year."

"I agree," le Carré said, "We planned to flee towards Les-Grandes-Collines and the territory of the de Villars, if we managed to repulse the siege by Seryl. Although that was a long shot, she is well known for her patronage of sappers and engineers of all kinds."

Julie nodded gravely, well aware of that fact herself.

"Jader should fall into our hands within days, if it has not already," Julie continued, "Using that as a base, we shall do two things; we will cut off the county from the rest of Orlais at the gap of Jader and use it as a sanctuary for refugees from the Eastern Dales, with Lord Clouet's army acting as the defence against attack from both Celene and Gaspard's wrath."

"But that country cannot possibly support everyone that would wish to flee," le Carré noted, "It might not even support everyone in Halamshiral."

"It borders Ferelden," I said, "We can import grain from the Bannorn via Gherlen's Pass, and even nug meat from Orzammar. But the plan isn't to simply dump the entirety of the one and a half million souls into the county."

"Then what is the plan?" the captain asked.

"We arrived here by eluvian," Tam replied, "A magical mirror that allows instant transportation across vast distances. The Empress had one, we assaulted the Palace through it and coordinated with Lord Clouet using others to attack the siege forces."

"We shall take that eluvian and install it in Jader, protected from attack and fully in our control," Julie said, "Using it, we will transport food into the county and those willing to become Trojan citizens out of it. If Jader comes under heavy attack, we can reinforce it in hours. And once the refugees are better established, they can be tied into our economy through the eluvians."

"And in the meanwhile, Lady Briala can use the empty countryside to harass both Celene and Gaspard's main fronts in the western Dales," Aurelia pointed out, "Without fear of retribution, or less of one. That would put us in a great position to retake the Eastern Dales next year, or the year after."

"And win the war..." Le Carré said, finishing the thought, "Take back Orlais from those pigs..."

The man wanted to fight. I decided I liked him after all, on the spot. Our project at Troy was one thing, but the lure of bringing the fight back to Orlais was also great. Especially as Velarana did not plan to fight in the Free Marches. We could strike them anywhere, any time, and the royalists could not retaliate. It gave Clouet the time and space he needed to build up an army to do the fighting himself.

With our weapons, naturally. Julie and Leha signed on to the plan as much out of a cashgrab as the general principle that it was my plan, albeit with great input from both them and the High Chancellor. The arms business was booming as it was. Jader was to be an autonomous province of the Republic, independent in domestic affairs but under our command for military and diplomatic purposes. Cloeut was going to need guns.

The crowd went silent, as the good captain, the Saviour of Halamshiral, picked his words. But it was a foregone conclusion now.

"We must take this proposal to the Council," le Carré declared loudly.

The throng of armed civilians and our own soldiers roared and cheered their approval, whistling.

"Lead the way, Captain!" Julie declared in turn, "There's no time to lose!"

Another cheer and roar, as the crowd sped off in the direction of the guild hall, taking Julie, Tam and le Carré with them. Aurelia and I hung back, as the people surged around us to follow, our escort remaining behind with us.

"She did it," I said, "I didn't think she would."

Aurelia made a noise of doubt. "They're enthusiastic now," she said, "But when they're faced with the necessity of leaving their home, they will hesitate."

I looked over at her, realising she wasn't only talking about them.

"Are you speaking from personal experience?" I asked.

"Yes," Aurelia replied bluntly, "I miss Treverorum and the Valarian Fields already. They were my home since as far as I can remember. Living in the wilderness of Valhalla is a … change in situation for me."

I felt protective of her at once, and moved close. Homesickness was something I could very much sympathise with, given that I was further away from home than any other being on Thedas.

"Don't worry," I said, "We have the eluvians now. Maybe we can set one up back home for you, and you can visit whenever you like. And Valhalla is going to change, especially if my plan succeeds." I planted a kiss on her lips quickly, to reassure her with an action as well as words. She let out a satisifed, happy noise

"Stealing my lips," she said, in a tone that suggested she would have appreciated more, "Whatever would the others say?"

I chuckled, but we were interrupted by a runner before I could formulate a coherent response, a private of the Rangers with a piece of paper in hand. She skidded to a halt behind, the noise catching our attention, panting where she stood.

"What is it, private?" I asked, "Take a moment, if you need it."

Normally, runners were to head straight back once they had a reply. The private looked like she'd keel over if expected to undertake that duty, and I suspected she might have been one of the few that had sneaked off to join the Valo-Kas party the night before. Which was excusable, because the only ones with the opportunity to do that had been those assigned to clearing the dead. A far more nasty duty than running.

"Thank you, my lord," the private replied, brushing her red hair back over her pointed ears, "Message from the Navy." She handed me the note and saluted.

I opened it and read, then read it again aloud.

"To Hunt, from Fisher,

These eluvians are very convenient. Just having one on the flagship has boosted morale considerably, because we can take casualties straight home if we need to.

We approached the seas around Jader yesterday, and were intercepted by the Val Royeaux squadron under Admiral Thalier-Beauregard and the Jader Defence squadron, under some idiot who had never been at sea before. We beat them, easily. A more detailed report will be delivered to the Chancellor and High Command at our next meeting, but I felt like you should be informed as soon as practicable, given your role in all this.

I must thank you personally, you kept your promise to us. Even if it took a little longer than we might have hoped.

I will see you in Jader. We make port tomorrow."

I rolled my eyes at his casual, unmilitary style of writing, and wished I could have been there to see our first victory at sea. From the land, preferably, my inevitable seasickness not being a good thing for viewing a battle, never mind surviving one.

"The other eluvian is doing a good job," Aurelia said, tapping her staff on the ground, "Pity we can't find any more so conveniently."

"I'll put Mariette on it," I shrugged, "There have to be more out there we can take. It was pure luck that Briala knew where two were nearby each other."

"And your plan worked," Aurelia added.

"So it seems," I replied, "We better get back to the others. I wanted to avoid the crowd, but I want to see Julie wrap them all around her little finger while Tam shows off her Warden-ness to the goggling masses."

And do that, they did.