Holly looked odd in her new paint. The way she held her head up high and her chest puffed out almost made Nike giggle. She stifled the urge so as not to hurt the dog's feelings.
Holly, like all mabari, was a big dog and lousy with muscle, but she was still a spoiled noblewoman's pet. She had training to hunt and track but none in fighting. Nike had seen some of the war mabari here and there since they'd arrived in camp, and they were very nearly a separate breed altogether. Even the smallest was nearly twice Holly's size, some of the larger males almost as big as bears.
Holly had watched the lines of war mabari and their soldiers trek out of the kennel area at the back of camp, resplendent in their war paint, and had 'insisted' in her Holly way that they go directly to the kennel master. She wasn't satisfied until she herself bore bold lines and sigils of crimson and white on her chestnut fur to rival any of the war hounds. The kennel master was patient as he painted her up, treating her with the respect he had offered to the mabari going into battle, and talking to her as if she were human and understood every word.
When Holly was done, he looked at Nike and held his hand out. Surprised, she said "Me?"
"You're the other half of her pair, aincha?" he said. "Soldiers get paint too. It's not just ceremonial, it's so the dogs can sniff who's on our side and who ain't in the thick of it."
"We're not going to be in the thick of it," Alistair said with a hint of longing in his voice. The kennel master squinted an eye at him.
"You ain't never been in battle, have you boy?" he asked.
"No, sir, I haven't. I've had training, sparring practice and the like, but- "
"Almost anything can happen and things that right well shouldn't have a way of happening anyway," the older man said, then hawked into the dirt. His fingers were caked with crimson from the mud pots he'd been dipping in for an hour now painting dogs, and his beard was smeared with it.
"Even so," Alistair said. "We're just meant to go to the tower and light the beacon when we're given the signal. We won't ever be near- "
"Girl, give me your arm," the kennel master said with a tone of impatience, dismissing Alistair out of hand. Nike, amused enough to let the man calling her 'girl' slip by, offered out her arm. Grasping her wrist, he dipped in the paint pots and drew a sigil on the inside of her forearm.
"For protection from arrows," he said, then turned her arm over and drew a different one. When he'd finished, he eyed Alistair and added, "And protection from fools."
"Thank you," Nike said. Alistair hadn't heard the comment. He was too busy watching the crowd that was now rapidly thinning as troops moved en masse out of camp to their assigned positions in the horseshoe valley where Cailin planned to corner the horde.
As the kennel master dropped her arm, Holly moved over and sniffed it approvingly, then puffed out her chest again.
"You and me, ok Hol?" Nike said, and resisted the urge to ruffle one of the dog's ears. Holly woofed softly and her little stub tail wiggled.
"We'd better get moving," Alistair said, and the three of them left the kennel and started across the now nearly deserted grand camp. Nike suppressed a shudder as she looked around. What had been a bustle of activity only a few minutes before was now nearly desolate, and felt abandoned. In the bright moonlight aided by still burning torches or hearth fires it seemed almost haunted. The few shadows of those who were to remain behind -servants, smiths, horse hands who were little more than boys, a scattering of healers- formed dark clusters around the low burning embers of this fire or that, their nervous voices molding together into a soft rustle that sounded like bones shifting in ancient crypts.
As they approached the bridge, Alistair pulled them off course a little to a small overlook on the top of the canyon wall. There, he peered downward, his hands pressed on the old stone wall, and leaning so far over he looked as if he meant to hop over and fall to his death.
It certainly would have been to his death. Nike had no real concern for heights but the sheer drop into the valley easily six hundred feet below was enough to make anyone dizzy. It was full dark now, the moon and stars obscured by thick and rumbling rain clouds. In the far distance, lightning had begun to lash. Each stuttering flicker of light illuminated the edges of trees and rocky hills as if they were cut from black velvet. Dark drops the size of copper bits were appearing on the stone as they looked downward.
The contrast of the dark sky above and the thousands of lights below made it seem as if the very stars had fallen only to cluster and mill in that stubby little valley. Torchlight gleamed and shimmered across a vast field and from this distance in the dark it was impossible to see individuals. The army was a single entity, a shifting nebulous mass that was quite beautiful and yet quite vulnerable. Flanked on each side by cliffs that appeared sheer, and backed by the massive, almost dam-like wall that the bridge crossed over, the whole mess seemed as naked as a clam out of the shell.
Of course, that was the point, wasn't it? To lure the horde in with an appearance of trapped vulnerability. Any human army lead by any captain or general or king worth their salt would have seen immediately through the ruse, but the darkspawn…they were little more than animals, weren't they? Like locusts, they relied on sheer number and a ruthless, unending, unthinking drive to push on, to consume all before them. They'd see here only a slaughter, a cauldron of blood ripe for the bathing, and move right in.
Nike could not see Loghain's men, though she knew from the briefing where they would be stationed. They carried no torch with them, nothing that would give them away before it became time to strike. However, in the distance she could see tiny flicks of light, like fireflies, beneath the trees and rocky hills that marked the end of the Wilds. As soon as she'd seen them, Alistair pointed them out.
"There. The horde is coming." He seemed riveted to the sight.
A low horn sounded far below, a single low note. They had spotted the horde too, and the note was a signal that the enemy was approaching. 'Wait and see', that note said. Though she knew they were meant to be getting to the tower, like Alistair she seemed fused to the spot as the rain slowly started to increase.
More lights, then more. What had been but a few fireflies began to join into orbs and bedsheets of gold and crimson lights. She could see now the individual trunks of trees, the lower formations of rocks, etched in that red and yellow. What at first seemed as just another rumble of thunder was growing instead of fading out- the footsteps of the death machine rolling undaunted toward them.
Lightning flashed and for the first time she saw individual shapes wavering between the trees. Thunder growled hungrily, and the sky let loose. In moments, both of them were soaked to the skin. Neither made any move save Nike, who shifted only enough to keep her bowstring dry under the oilskin cloak Alistair had made her put on. Holly, blinking the rain from her eyes, whined.
The horde broke from the trees and started to ooze into the far end of the horseshoe valley. As with their own army, distance blended the horde into an indistinguishable mass, broken here and there by a darkspawn so big that at first she thought she must be seeing things.
"Alistair-?" She started to say, his answer coming before she could complete the question.
"Ogres," he said.
Some sort of horn broke the sound of the rain and the rumbles of thunder. Unlike the horn that had blown before, this was of a breathier, rougher sound. It rose the hair along Nike's arm and iced the back of her neck far more than the falling rain was doing. The mass of the horde moved forward at speed, flooding into the valley, and Cailan's forces surged forward to meet them. In the quickly vanishing space between them Nike thought she saw specks of pepper flying across the field toward the horde in a particularly bright flash of light. The crashing peel of thunder had sounded before she realized the grains of pepper were the war mabari.
As the two sides of the battle came together into one madly swirling mélange, another flash of light showed larger moving objects that were not ogres.
The horde had siege weapons. A great trebuchet emerged from the trees, and as soon as it was clear its arm began to swing.
Alistair suddenly gripped her arm, realizing as she did that they had lingered too long.
"Go!"
Turning from the battle, the air now ringing with a roar of shouting voices, clashing weapons, and bellowing dogs, they broke into a run out onto the bridge.
Their own siege weapons had been stationed at intervals along the bridge, small teams of men gathered to load each bucket and fire. Two of these went off with great rumbling sounds just as the first boulder from the trebuchets below came sailing over the rampart and slammed into the bridge. Men screamed, and stone exploded in every direction. Nike heard more than one chunk whiz past her head and ears, and ducked instinctively.
A cloud of stone dust and smoke temporarily obscured her vision. She stumbled briefly over something she thought was stone until it gave a cry of pain, and she realized it was one of the soldiers that had been manning their catapults. She had no time to stop and help him.
We were fools to linger so long, she thought. They could have been across the bridge and to the tower before the first of the trebuchets had been in range. Now the bridge seemed infinitely long, infinitely old, and the heavy boulders the horde were lobbing were smashing into it with earth-thundering explosions. Under her running feet, she could feel the deep shudders of every impact and wondered how many it would take before the entire structure collapsed beneath them.
The far end of the bridge finally seemed to be sight when suddenly a catapult in front of them exploded as a boulder struck it, sending men, wood, and stone flying. She heard Holly yelp somewhere but could spare no thought for the mabari as her arms pinwheeled back in a desperate attempt to keep her balance. The impact shudder of the bridge seemed to be growing, and she could feel the ancient structure shifting forward under her feet and then disappear.
A roaring filled her ears and she half skipped backward. Her hip came up against rock and then even that was bowing forward, intent to spill her into the crumbling rend in the bridge that seemed to be growing wider with every heartbeat.
Desperate, she twisted, throwing her hands out to catch anything she could, and out of the cloud of smoke her grip was caught. With a tremendous heave, her momentum was reversed and Alistair was pulling her back onto solid ground, his face pale where it was not smeared with ash. His effort landed him on his ass, Nike half collapsed beside him. Shaking, she pushed herself up to her feet, coughing dust form her lungs. Alistair's eyes were huge as he regarded her.
"Are you all right?"
"No time," she replied, and tried to see her path through the settling dust. The bridge ahead of them had not collapsed, but hole that boulder had torn through it consumed nearly half of their path. Twenty or thirty feet of the span was now gone, including the catapult and the men who had been loading it. They had only a narrow lip along the back of the bridge now to continue.
She waved dust out of her face, looking around worriedly, then spotted Holly on the far side of the rend, barking at them. Alistair made it back to his feet as Nike began to pick her way along the narrow lip, moving as quickly as she dared but more than aware of the groans and shifts of stone underfoot as the unstable connection threatened to give way. Behind her, she heard Alistair doing the same, and did not let out another breath until they were back on solid footing beside the mabari.
Holly did not appear to be hurt. She gave Nike's hand a quick lick and then turned and pelted along the bridge, her two human companions not far behind.
The horns of the horde barked again, and she heard the heavy hissing whistle of more incoming ordnance from the trebuchets, and then the stone of the bridge gave way to dirt and rock and trees, and they were across.
The storm was in full force, rain sheeting down in silvery bellows, the trees rocking and lashing in the wind. She could see the tower now, rising above those wild branches, its windows lit and flickering with torchlight, but there was something else. Blue and green and gold light flashed somewhere near the ground, behind the wall that separated the courtyard of the tower from the roadway, and the sounds of battle could be heard far too closely.
"The tower is under attack?" Alistair backhanded the rain from his eyes. "How is that possible?"
"There," Nike pointed toward a stumbling shadow. Without waiting for him she ran for it, catching the injured man under the arm as he stumbled again. The sigil on his leather breast plate was that of Loghain's men.
The moment the soldier realized they were human he said "Horde. There are darkspawn in the tower."
"How?" Nike asked. The horde should not have been able to reach the road without first going through both Cailan's forces in the valley, and Loghain's armies held back in reserve.
"Don't know," he said, blood dripping with the rain down his face. "They came up from below, took us by surprise."
"Can you fight?" Nike asked, and he scrubbed a hand over his face again, took in a shaking breath, then nodded.
"Aye, I've got some left in me I think."
"You wanted battle," Nike said to Alistair. "Sounds like it has found us."
"You're right, we've got to get the tower back. If that beacon isn't lit in time- "
The wounded man shook his head. "There are hundreds of darkspawn in there, if not more by now. We had twenty men and mages stationed. Some of the mages still fight but it was a massacre. We won't be able to take the tower back, not with just us handful."
"We don't really need to take it back," Nike told him, and then looked again at Alistair. "We just need to get the beacon lit."
"Of course it's at the very top," he said, craning his head upward. Soaked to the skin and pale, he looked even more like a little boy than ever. Then he shook his head. "If Andraste is with us, we can cut a way through, get to the beacon chamber and get the fire lit."
Nike didn't bother to ask how they'd get out again. If they could hold their own just enough to get up to the chamber, they would be forced to hold the chamber at all costs until the battle was won or the darkspawn overwhelmed them; the latter being the far more likely conclusion to this hellish work.
I can't die here, she thought. For my family's honor, for their justice, I cannot die here.
She drew out and set her bow. Alistair drew his sword and then gave her a thin-lipped smile, nodding. The wounded soldier still had his sword in hand, and visibly steeled himself as best he was able.
"Holly, stay close," Nike said, and the mabari growled softly in response. Trying to screw up her own courage she started forward toward those ominous colored flashes and the entrance to the courtyard.