When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go
Charles Sorley
From his position on the hillside, Jowan watched the infantry descend in long, winding, dun-coloured trickles, like the capillaries of some vast, spreading tree - or veins. He swallowed hard, not wanting to think of anything blood-related. It was not the low, constant thrum of yearning that bothered him - it was the vision of himself sprawled in a disjointed heap. His stomach was slashed - a gaped mouth. Jowan unconsciously turned his head. Blinking, he cleared the image. Fear crept insidiously along nerve-paths; sang in the channels of his spine. He cleared his throat. A snuffling noise like a sob emerged. He tried to focus on the army below - so many ranks between that and him - watched the dun-coloured mass divide itself into ranks and squares - motions as unknowable to him as some complex Dwarven machine.
The mounted escort - a young soldier whose tunic bore the wyvern crest of Gwaren - kept one hand on the reins of Ser Otto's steed and called on them to start down the trail. Then Jowan's real nightmare began. Jouncing miserably, his horse's hooves slithering through mud like pigs in slop, he forgot to be afraid. Balance required total concentration. Muddy brown eyes fixed morosely upon the back of his Templar companion. Although reliant on the escort for guidance, Ser Otto kept his balance as easily as if he'd been born with a horse between his legs. As always, Jowan was somehow unable to see the burned, hairless scalp - the scars that were waxen patches interspersed with striations of shiny white silk - the unsettling eyes, blank and grey as though filmy strands of gossamer-fine web had been woven across them. If he had, he might have liked his keeper better - for Jowan felt the suffering of others keenly. But the serenity, the steadfast singleness of purpose, called to mind a blond, blue-eyed paragon - a stained glass window - and that annoyed him intensely. Ser Otto was the son of a knight - sent to the Chantry as so many younger sons were - and although he had described his former home as little more than a glorified farmstead, it confirmed Jowan's opinion of over-privileged, bone-headed bucket-helms. Lord Valiant and Lady Virtue, most happily married in the Castle of Chivalry... Get that demon-spawn out of my sight! Jowan felt the sting of the strap - smelled the mingled odours of stale sweat and leather and ale that permeated his parents' cottage - and reflected on injustice: a favourite topic.
Memory dissolved into the present sights and sounds: the rain-soaked leather of the reins - the acrid steam coming off his horse's flanks: faint, wispy tendrils no bigger than half-moon nails, curling like ghosts of lace - the foul water that pooled darkly like blood in the mass of craters and furrows churned up by myriad boots. The staccato rhythm of rain on Templar armour: droplets like tiny baubles on the purple sash, little glittering blisters on the mirror-bright plate. Descending to a ledge on the hillside, a merciful fringe of trees screened the battlefield ahead. The light, filtered through spikes of firs, undulated and gleamed like a green sea.
Jowan was shocked out of introspection by an agonized scream. The sharpness of it seemed to actually lighten the forest gloom. Roaring commands and shouts of men in combat struck next. Jowan was astounded to see that Ser Otto appeared more anguished than apprehensive. He had to reason it out: the knight heard his fellow Templars engaged, and was unable to help. Jowan suffered no such delusions. He wished with all his heart they could turn and flee.
Three short and two long trumpet blasts shook the air like a banner. A crash and rumble ahead. Ser Otto kneed his horse ahead, but the escort caught the reins. "Not yet, ser. We wait for the Teyrn's signal."
The first of the causalities staggered towards them. Jowan's breath caught at the sight of the pair careering from tree to tree. One clutched at his right arm. Blood pumped from his bicep. The second man supported his friend. The broken shaft of a spear, its jagged remnant corroded with a ghastly mixture of red and black blood, extruded from his shoulder. He barely looked up as he passed. He was humming to himself: Jowan heard the faint, tortured notes of some strange music.
The trumpet blared again: two sharp staccato notes.
"Now!" The escort jerked the reins, and Jowan found himself following the soldier and Templar through the thick curtain of trees. It ended on a wide, grassy ridge, several metres above the plain below. "Wait here for the Teyrn's orders." The escort dug his heels into his horse's sides and galloped forward along the grassy arc, towards the battle.
Jowan looked down upon an uncounted multitude: tens of thousands of shrieking, damned creatures that undulated, flowed, crawled towards him. The dun-coloured arc was a beachhead swallowed by an ocean of horror. It was too much, too vast - he had a sense of demand from the expressionless void: vertigo threatened to pitch him forward. The empty, uncaring sky shimmered with oily needles of rain: spear-sharp, tiny white points of light. Beyond the storm of steel, an amorphous cloud drifted forward, an encroaching arc like the lunar eclipse he and Lily had once watched from the top floor of the Tower, ready to cover everything like a shroud. His mind roiled with inchoate images of brute violence. Only an empty stomach prevented him heaving himself dry. He retched; clapped a hand to his mouth. The sound emerged as a soft groan.
"Stay calm," came the clipped, soldierly voice, not unkindly.
"Stay calm?" Jowan's voice pitched higher on the second syllable, as raw as if he'd been weeping for days, hysteria tickling the edges of his mind. "Easy for you to say - you can't see what's out there!"
There was a long moment of silence. Then his companion gave a faint cough, a strangled snort, and looked away as if struggling for composure. Even in his terror, Jowan's natural compassion pricked his conscience: he hadn't meant to wound the knight. He had blurted out the words before he thought: but hadn't Lily said once that you should never comment on a person's family or disability? He looked tentatively toward him, the faint, soft flow of regret causing terror to ebb just slightly. Ser Otto's face was averted; his shoulders twitching. Maker - was he crying?
Jowan edged forward - then stopped. A roiling wave of fury hit him low in the gut. The Templar bastard was laughing; making valiant efforts to stifle it.
"It's - not- funny!" he grated out, so angry he could hardly speak, "How can you laugh at a time like this?"
"I do apologize - it is unseemly." The shamefaced look was ruined by the hitch of smothered laughter. Amusement rippled across the disfigured face the way wind ripples wheat: sunlit echoes warring with sombre duty. Jowan saw the carefree young nobleman he had been. "It's just - if I'm ever inclined to mourn my injury, I need only remember your unique brand of positive thinking. As you so rightly point out: there is a silver lining to every cloud..." He stifled laughter again, but one little snort broke through.
"You Templar bastard! You maggot! People are dying out there - we're going to be next!"
A faint shadow crossed the Templar's face as he went silent, listened to the moans and cries of his fellows.
"Perhaps," he said, more seriously this time, but with a note of humour nonetheless, "You should not leave me in blissful ignorance. Tell me what you see."
Jowan looked disbelievingly at the knight: saw that he was serious. There was an edge of underlying need beneath the question. He flinched; forced himself to look once more at the vast charnel pit that opened below. "Damned well I will then," he snarled, yearning to siphon off some of the horror into his companion. "I see..." Jowan struggled for words to convey the sight, mind empty of everything but horror, "I see...a vast, Maker-damned darkspawn horde!"
There was a slightly strained note of patience in Ser Otto's voice when he prompted, "Yes: the Warden's reports said they numbered twenty-thousand. What of our own troop movements? Where do the pikemen stand? The archers? The infantry? What positions? Are they holding ground, or retreating? How? In disorder?"
"What do you mean: in disorder? Everything's in disorder!"
"Do they carry their shields? Do they remain in units? Is the withdrawal staggered? Do they form an overall arc from the Imperial Highway to the Drakon River?"
Jowan stared - blinked - face screwed up in concentration, trying consciously to see the roiling unknowable mass as Ser Otto would; impose order like a costume upon chaos. Pikemen? He squinted through the swirling cloud of dust, rain and blood. One set of dun-coloured smears looked much like another...wait, those had longer weapons: a shining, bristling mass held before them like the spines of hedgehogs.
"I see the Teyrn's pikemen - to our right: between us and those ruins...wait! There are archers all along there..."
Ser Otto nodded, as if Jowan had just confirmed something. Thoughtfully, as if to himself, he murmured, "The King's Highway, the Warden's cavalry and the Dalish archers form one jaw of the trap; the infantry and wall of pikes the other. But a tactical withdrawal takes great leadership. What is the Teyrn's position?"
Jowan stared, squinted, struggled – fought to see the world through the soldier's eyes as he would have wrestled with a foreign language. It was the way they played chess: his words translated the board and Ser Otto reflected it back in new patterns. The heaving random lines and squares joined like the pieces of a puzzle; nameless, formless fear receded. His white, shaking hands, clenched around the reins, relaxed in slow increments. His gaze sharpened like a seeking hawk; he saw the Teyrn on horseback, Orlesian plate reflecting a dark radiance of colours, riding from unit to unit. Understanding burst in him like a flame.
"I see him!" he cried excitedly, "He's directing the retreat just where it should go!"
Sensitive to the moods around him, Jowan was aware of Ser Otto's approval, the faint quirk of an appreciative smile.
"Indeed. I heard the men and women of Maric's Shield grumbling because the Teyrn split them up: each soldier to command a squad of ten. They're used to fighting together, as at Ostagar. It's better for morale. But a strategy like this demands discipline, communication."
The shrilling cacophony below made a kind of sense: buglers passing messages from squad leaders to red-plumed captains to the Teyrn himself; a constant two-way flow, rippling up and down the chain of command. A sudden realisation struck him and he jerked upright in the saddle, boiling with indignation. "Hey – your Templars are positioned well back: they're mounted iron golems and they're letting the little guys do all the work!"
Ser Otto remained unperturbed. "They're following the Teyrn's orders," he said placidly, "The infantry are the bait. When the darkspawn are lured to the deadfall, they'll be rallying points: armoured fists the infantry will follow."
"Humph," Jowan stared balefully at the glittering mass of heavily caparisoned horses and iron monoliths with sun-shields. For him, the sight carried sickly undertones of Exalted Marches – the terror of mages and Elves – the greasy dampness of hopeless flight…
"We train as the Orlesian chevaliers do," Ser Otto was saying, "heavily-armoured – less manoeuvrable than the lighter Ferelden cavalry: a fist rather than a fleet spike."
"And you claim you're just mage-watchdogs," Jowan muttered in disgust, "Make no mistake – you're an army."
Ser Otto bristled – but was there a faint glimmer of uncertainty about the young, stoic face? "Purely defensive: we protect the Chantry."
Sensing a weakness, Jowan needled further: "Against people who have no intention of being converted?" His pleasure was cut short at the sudden ripple of movement at the far right edge of his vision. He stared, breath catching in his throat, at a sight that flickered like dark flames. The whispers of the Fade monster he heard in his dreams, through his veins, in his quietest moments, rose to a scream: promises of rescue, of salvation. Almost sobbing, he wrenched his mind away. His terror was elemental and had the power to annihilate him. He squinted into the distance; fought to focus on the danger he could at least see coming. One shadow...two...three...four - heading with their strange loping gait up the ridge.
"Ser!" It came out a strangled croak; he tried again, "There are four of those...things...heading straight for us! How could they have passed the pikemen? How could they know what we..."
Inhumanly calm, Ser Otto turned sightless eyes to his. "What distance?"
Jowan stared, squinted. The blurred rainwashed vista played strange tricks. Even after six months of freedom, his judgement was uncertain on anything over the distances of the Tower. Corridors that were concentric rings of stones, dorms and classrooms packed with apprentices like sheep in a pen. The longest distances had been upward: row upon row of tomes untouched for centuries; high slits of windows, air currents choked by dust and candle-smoke. Shuffling feet and whispers, like the rustle of dead leaves. The glittering panoply of the outside world was strange - fast-moving objects seemed to leap out at him; peculiarly raw and naked, unexplained.
He tried his best. "Fifty yards - no, twenty! - they're moving very fast. They're built like dwarves...wait, one of them has a staff!"
Ser Otto nodded, and then - to Jowan's horror - jabbed his spurs into his horse's sides and started forward. The knight had followed the Warden's advice about horses and darkspawn - accustoming his mount to the scent of their blood - and the quality of horse and rider did the rest. As soon as the sickly, fetid stink shifted closer - iron mixed with disease and a faint medicinal scent that reminded him of the phylactery chamber - Jowan's own mount shied and reared. A moment of uncontrollable imbalance - a sickening impact - and he was on the ground, sparks whirling round his head like white birds pecking, each with a jab of pain. His body exploded into a tornado of screaming bruises - sheer terror brought him to his knees.
"What are you doing!" he shouted furiously, "You can't see them!"
"You can!" came the steady baritone, lit with what sounded infuriatingly like excitement, "Cast around me!"
Cursing, groaning, wheezing tortuously, Jowan dragged himself to his feet, aiming his staff like a spear. He stared at the broad shiny back - Ser Otto like an iron figurehead atop a brown, rolling cargo ship, wielding his mace in alternating arcs, like oars - and thought to himself that serving as a human shield was the best use of Templars he'd ever seen... The nearest darkspawn went down under rending hooves, battered into tattered black ruin. A chance blow from the mace disoriented the next - but not before the creature had sunk filthy nails into the horse's heaving flank, drawing a long gash. A shrill whinny - Ser Otto's roar of fury - and the pointed sabaton pulped the hideous howling face into a mass of wet black ribbons.
The darkspawn mage - the emissary, the Warden had called them - was waving its hands like carrion birds. Decaying cloth shivered and fluttered like a swarm of bats. Hoarse, guttural sounds bubbled out of its mouth: nonwords that reeked of death and hatred, of confused, hopeless pain. They were sounds that could have come from the boy in Arl Howe's dungeon: terrible sounds that echoed down the pathways of Jowan's mind. Except that these built power: a seething tide of untamed magic. Sensing it, the Templar began a chant of his own.
The fourth darkspawn headed straight for Jowan.
On instinct - terror superseding fear of punishment - Jowan reached for the familiar red tapestries - sent the seeking strands of his will down into the complex network that powered the shrieking, damned creature. He sought the shimmering, living threads of likeness that would allow him to connect: hijack the waters of an alien ship and take over its helm.
He found a blank wall. Blood that may as well have been mud, or the wax of incipient decay. Dead sludge, dying and rotting even as the creature was virulently, horrifyingly alive - as alive as the invisible creatures that had fed on the infected wounds of Arl Howe's prisoners.
Sheer, blank shock rooted Jowan to the spot. The rebuff of his magic was as physically painful as a punch into iron. Terror splintered his mind. That pitted, corroded axe, edge poisoned with the creature's own blood, took on a malign life of its own, like the notched head of a snake.
With a hoarse shriek of terror, Jowan reached inside and found an inchoate storm, its changing many-coloured forms bleeding into the void. Emptiness, darkness, yearning. The amorphous chaos leeched out into his surroundings. The creature swayed...swayed...
A faint crackle of positive energy - a resonance - a blue hammer blow.
"No don't!" Jowan shrieked. The Templar's building power vanished in an azure cloud - the crack of the darkspawn's magic hit him square in the chest. The young features went slack, then bunched in pain. The impact threw him backwards, off the horse, dropped him face-down. Reflexes born of unstinting training made him roll - fingers still clenched tightly around the handle of the mace. The horse charged down the ridge, long scratches searing trembling flanks, as though it could outrun pain and sickness.
Jowan's darkspawn dropped to the ground, strange, mewling noises pouring from its throat, as though it were in pain. Jowan's spell had trapped the creature in the Fade, and darkspawn did not dream. In the Fade, they could not hear the Call. Jowan's gaze snapped up, to the emissary - standing over the knight. Before he had time to question himself - talk himself into being frightened - Jowan aimed his staff like a pointing, angry finger. Effortlessly - the magic belonging to the Birchcore rather than springing up fountain-like within - he sent blossoming sparks of flame into the emissary like petals of living crystal. The darkspawn howled in pain, its mouth a gaping, shapeless hole. Jowan felt the air turn thicker - so full of crawling taint he might have been breathing oil. The cloud of magic expanded like a stain, a cancer, filling the air with the stench of sickness. Jowan's bowels turned to water - he froze in place, every nerve drawn taut in a long shrill scream. He had no magic to protect himself; could only dodge - or run.
Ser Otto's booted foot struck out - connected with the one place even a darkspawn could not ignore. An animal howl rent the air; a scissors chop of Ser Otto's legs took its feet from under it. The Templar rolled - by sheer luck in the right direction. The darkspawn landed with a wet thud beside him - not on top. Ser Otto gained his knees: several heavy swings of the mace were enough to finish the creature.
Jowan started forward, mud-drenched trousers slopping about trembling knees. He slid in mud - waterlogged furrows that sucked at his feet with a sound like slurping. Ser Otto was on his knees, head cocked, reaching out with hearing and senses for the presence of other darkspawn. He too was covered in mud from head to toe. The arcane bolt had cracked his breastplate: a lightning-shaped fissure decorated his right side. Face screwed up. Eyes shut. Gasping for breath.
"Ser - are you..."
"It's nothing...I can tell." Every word sounded as though the knight were being stabbed. "Broke a rib...maybe two; they'll heal. No taint...no - infection..." Jowan grabbed an elbow, took as much of the armoured weight as he could, as Ser Otto struggled to his feet. He winced, despite himself, unable to forget that it had been he who had spoiled the knight's Cleansing Aura.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, "I shouldn't have..."
Ser Otto dismissed the apology with a small shake of his head. "I should have...planned for that. You can't...foul your partner's shield...in battle." A small smile quirked his lips. "I'm used to...fighting mages. Not...alongside them." He stopped as Jowan, still supporting him, dared a peek downward at the roiling chaos below. An odd hesitation came over his face - as if debating how much to divulge. Finally, he added, "Besides...that magic...wasn't normal. No mana...some form of Blood Magic...but different. Taint...not blood. Templar powers...might not have worked anyway."
"Neither did..." Jowan blurted - and could have bitten off his tongue.
The scarred forehead crinkled as the hairless brows rose in enquiry. Once again, Jowan saw the real face: the sunlit ease that was not like the arrogance of anyone else he knew.
"Oh?"
"I mean - Blood Magic might not have worked either. Just as well I didn't use it." Seeing Ser Otto's dubious expression, Jowan thought rapidly. Lying to the Templar was at once easier and harder than usual: he didn't have to worry about eye contact or facial expression, but he knew the knight would pick up on the slightest nuances of voice. Indignation came to his rescue - he did not have to fake the aggrieved tone when he pointed out: "I used a sleep spell and my staff. I would have thought - seeing as I saved your life with them - you'd be more appreciative."
Could it be - was Ser Otto actually smiling? A ripple of quicksilver amusement danced beneath the solemnity when he said: "Indeed. Your entropic spells were most effective. Perhaps next time you'll think of them first."
Zzz...zzz...zzz. The words blended into unidentified buzzing. Jowan was suddenly dizzy with relief and the aftereffects of adrenaline. Nice footwork, he congratulated himself. Very nimble. A smug grin spread over his face as he contemplated having fooled the knight. Looking around at their handiwork, he wanted to jump up and down. His blood seemed to fizz through his body. Four darkspawn! Between them, they'd killed four darkspawn!
A giddy smirk stretched his muscles from ear to ear. Despite the roars and shrieks that rose from the field below, he felt cheerful enough to return to his favourite pastime. "Does this mean that Templar powers don't work on Blood Mages either?" he prodded, "Is that why the Chantry gets its robes in a knot?"
Ser Otto kept a deadpan expression as he used his purple, richly embroidered sash to wipe the mud from his face, refusing to confirm or deny it. "Just remember - fists do."
Jowan scowled. His battered lip still burned and throbbed. Any sympathy he felt for his injured companion was rapidly drying to a thimbleful.
A rumble of hooves sounded like drumbeats. Jowan peered downward - saw the distinctive Orlesian plate - the red-plumed helm - the wyvern standard. The Teyrn guided his horse up the ridge, pausing to survey the reeking bodies of the darkspawn, the scrawny mage and blind Templar standing calmly in the midst. The hawk's face was pale with weariness; the steely eyes smudged with purple shadows. The ashen curve of a smile brushed his lips.
"Looks like you two have the situation well in hand."
"Ser." The Templar stiffened, parade-ground straight, and saluted. Jowan managed a sickly imitation. He wondered if the Teyrn were thinking of the last, terribly botched, mission he'd had for him. Now that the Teyrn and Arl Eamon were allies, might he not want such a reminder to simply - disappear... But from the looks of things, the man had larger problems. Like an eagle, he surveyed the overview of the battle.
"Ready your spells, mage. Prepare to give the signal on my command."
Time stretched tautly. Beads of sweat crawled down Jowan's spine like tiny spiders. Peering downward, he saw the mass of infantry stretched in a long curve, from the ranks of pikemen to the grey smear of the river. The rear ranks were almost touching the waiting Templar units. When the Teyrn barked: "Now!" he raised the Birchcore staff to the sky. One of the first magical commands he'd ever learned sent a shower of red-gold sparks spiralling upwards. The sudden release of tension left him wrung-out as a wet dishcloth. He saw the Teyrn in profile, studying the battlefield as Jowan might have studied a chessboard. That beak of a nose and intense, seeking eyes made him look more like a bird of prey than ever. His thin smile of satisfaction held the gleam of a knife.
"Now – you two are to report to the hospital tent."
Ser Otto's young, scarred face was dismayed, chagrined. The broad, stiffly rigid shoulders slumped slightly.
"No, your grace...you'll deplete...our defence."
The Teyrn's reply was brisk, but not unkind. "Do not concern yourself, ser knight. The enemy is in the mouth of the trap. A few more moments should do it."
Jowan saw the struggle: discipline warring with regret. At last, rather stiffly, the Templar nodded.
Lips pursed judiciously, Jowan was careful to infer that he, too, was grudgingly following orders. If he seemed too eager for deliverance, the Teyrn would probably change his mind - invent some horrible task for him. He thought he saw the trace of a knowing smile pass across the bone-weary face, that usually looked as though a smile might crack it. He decided he must be imagining things.
Given the choice between darkspawn and Wynne the Wise, Jowan decided, he'd take Wynne.
The redbeam of light split the roiling sky like a blade across bruised flesh, parting it like wet wool.
Unbearable relief burst in Rilian; the tense aching agony of waiting finally over.
Staring out at the heaving mass visible from the narrow gully - the ground higher here, and higher again on Loghain's side - she understood that the Teyrn had timed it perfectly. Along the dark smudge of the forest of South Reach, a ripple shook the glistening line: gaps and patches appeared like a frayed, tattered ribbon. Organically, the mass pulled back, closed in on itself: seething chaos as they collided with the howling exodus north, like two opposing eddies of water, and were pulled toward the undertow as the Dalish rolled up the darkspawn right flank.
The shock travelled south as well as north: the wall of darkspawn ahead was now in flux: gaps appeared in the bruise-dark mass - shadowy craters that seemed to welcome the spike of their charge - a needle lancing a wound. Astride Racer's glistening black back, the mass of muscle buoying up frail flesh encased in too-heavy armour; the shield she could not use - Rilian turned to give the order. In the same thought-instant, a terrible alternative - a mocking ghost of possibility - swam before her eyes. For a moment, she saw the world in double-vision. Suppose the signal had been late - the vista one of hopeless odds: a writhing, dark-crawling mass poised like a wall of black oil, about to annihilate Loghain's men. A series of unbearable images unfolded with pellucid clarity: the stark choice - the absolute necessity of retreat, preserving the only force standing between Ferelden and annihilation - the cries of inhuman agony, the shouts and curses and prayers… The nightmare dissolved like wisps of smoke: pale mournful fingers that brushed her mind then bled into reality, leaving nothing but a shudder and a cold sweat. That had never been her nightmare: she had seen it from an ivory tower, been rescued like a storybook hero; had never had to make that choice... Her left hand, looped about the reins, stroked the warm, silky mane - the immense bulk and power like a banked furnace beneath her - her right rested on Ravenous' square slab of a head. He whined appreciatively. Anchored and centered, the nameless horror shivered down to distant, hard calm. Transient thoughts flickered and buzzed: would she fail before she ever reached the Archdemon? Fall from the saddle and start eating dirt? Run away, shaking and crying? Perversely, the thoughts calmed her: those things weren't in her. Combat seemed to be the only place where fear and confusion didn't follow.
Poised on the brink of intense and deadly action, everything she saw came to her with clear and exquisite detail: the earnest, heavy drops of rain that ran off Ser Perth's armour in tiny, jagged streams - emerald and ruby upon the colours of Redcliffe, clear as crystal across his sword. The myriad pairs of eyes - pale and dark, muddy and clear - that clung to her like drowning men beneath the fake ferocity of their helms. She hung on the edge of herself: in another moment she would be gone, becoming nothing more than a set of instincts, freed from memory, from doubt, from fear. Her words were the feast of starvelings: bright, transient promises and the melancholy exaltation of a life that counts its seconds. Something in her mood carried over, pulled them with her - she had always had that power. The world shifted beneath her; she felt suddenly strange, as though all the strength were draining from her body. They were pulling it out of her, demanding it. She gave it gladly: all the strength she had in her, and then some. She didn't care that the speech itself was gloriously romantic - her real faith was in Loghain. Her own legend was a beautiful lie - but it was true to life as it should be and that was a better truth than the other. The only one not taken in was Sten. At the sight of that dark-skinned, impassive face, his granite certainty a bulwark, she felt her face stretch into a brilliant, relieved smile. Sten would never be anything other than what he was.
A little sheepishly, she muttered: "Loghain's plan is sound. It'll work."
The amethyst eyes never wavered. "You have carried us this far. Do not doubt that."
Absurdly touched, Rilian stammered unsuccessfully at response. Her tongue, normally so glib, failed her.
The dry, deadpan sense of humour that shone in intermittent flashes beneath Sten's monolithic silences came to her rescue. "The enemy awaits. Shall we grant him the death he asks of us?"
Rilian laughed - and for the first time in weeks felt free. It was as if a chain binding her to a world she neither liked nor understood was suddenly broken.
"It's only fair."
Strong and sustained, the voice trained by Leliana rang down the long spear of horsemen. Eerie, numinous, the high hawklike cry turned Loghain's credo "For Ferelden" to strange music: four notes, rising and falling. The riders took up the chant; the deep heavy base notes surrounded it, absorbed it, the words lost in the echo, the sound soaring like the fierce outcry of a cloud of swooping eagles. It goaded the horses more than spurs. Before they ever came in sight, the darkspawn had felt their thunder through the ground.
The mass ahead was a rippling curtain of flesh: seething, disjointed by the slow collapse of the right flank. Once again, Rilian thought of a single organism. This one responded to the invading stream of life by sending out lethal spikes. The line of darkspawn crawled towards them like the wax of a half-melted candle. The horses reared and shied, but could not veer to the side: the gully was too narrow. Urged on by the pressure behind, they ran from non-existent danger. A stray, incongruous flash of pity floated with distant unimportance: they had used the herd instinct against creatures no more capable of translating war than an earthworm could a sunset. The rising, falling rhythm juddered her bones; Racer's glistening black back was a small boat. The mud-sodden ground rolled beneath like a vast, polluted sea.
One second. Two. The ranks closed.
Impact.
Howling, storm-tossed, Rilian crashed against the dark mass. Gone was the Warden-Commander. Gone the need to mourn men killed or tainted. Gone was Rilian. Elf, horse and dog flew at their enemies. Darkspawn faces were rotting smears beneath corroding helmets; their open mouths gaping, shapeless holes. She hacked at them from side to side - once on the left and once on the right. Racer plunged, stumbled - somehow she kept her balance. Her sword was her balance - up and down, side to side, moving like a live thing. It led her, became part of her, all her will poured into it. She felt her arm turn to iron, hard as the Dalish blade, and battered away as Nelaros had once worked the forge. She did not attempt to parry the enormous, rusted blades - when they lifted them, she sliced at hands and arms. When they rushed her, she sought gaps in piecemeal armour, her grip a frantic spasm. Her mind was a dark room, fetid with taint, pulped by unbearable noise. The vast spiderweb of the hive mind squeezed her own into strange fragments: alive somewhere but in locked rooms. The dark spaces between crawled with images of predation, of unity; her mouth was open, aching, for tiny parched drops of sustenance. Somewhere above the morass of decay, of disintegration, notes of music flickered like tongues of silver fire, untouchable and out of reach.
A writhing tendril of an alien consciousness intruded - slithered through the dark spaces like a snake through rotting vegetation. She jerked upright in the saddle - the convulsive shudder of waking - drawn with the inexorability of undertow. The black flame of an iron will burned steadily through a rotting mind - fragments of brief, transient consciousness; sears of memory traces already drowning in the shadows - created order and purpose. Deep, primal yearning drew her to the drumbeat that made patterns - strategies - out of the amorphous silver song. Yet the seeking black strand struck something, like flint into tinder: the lambent flame of her own will blossomed like a rose of fire. She recognized the dark mirror of her own leadership - respected it - fought against it with every fibre of her being.
Rilian broke the surface of her dark dream; stared around her at the glistening inferno. Horses hamstrung by darkspawn axes rolled on the ground in agony, the gashes on heaving flanks already oozing corruption. The faces of dying soldiers raised to the sky like drowning men; tiny spear-tips of rain falling into mad, transparent eyes. The entire valley was no more than a mass grave - or the dark-veined womb of one of the creatures that birthed these monsters. She and Racer were standing upon a swell of higher ground; the mass of darkspawn was seething northward, fleeing the charge and pursuing Loghain's infantry - even as the predator, innocent in its ferocity, claims the bait in puny man's clever deadfall. Racer was breathing in ragged, sucking gasps; frothing sweat bathed him from chest to loins. Ravenous, beside her, was steeped in a swirl of black blood that formed macabre patterns. Jagged white teeth gleamed like blood-stained spears; the black trickle ran down his jaws. The light was murky - the world seen through a muddy pane - Rilian blinked sweat from her eyes and squinted toward the sky, churning with metallic clouds. Glints of light - as seen through a shield wall - winked out one by one as the heart of the Blightstorm approached. Flickers of malign energy preceded it: tiny, reptile tongues of green and purple lightning that glinted off steel, gilding the agonized spasms of battle in a surrealistic glow. The vast mass seemed thick - the texture of wet black wool - a dark, pulsing heart that thrummed with the feverish crawling life of an insect swarm. The blackness edged towards the greasy yellow-grey sun in a dark crescent. In moments, the throbbing bruise had covered it like sackcloth. Day darkened to night, as completely as if the battlefield were covered by a shroud. Raindrops turned to black spheres coated with an iridescent sheen, falling upon the obscene mass of wildly jerking limbs like splatters of ink, or black poppies. The dying white faces seemed to rise and fall upon a luminous dark sea.
Drawn to the black tendril of will, Rilian followed the link toward a mound of white rubble that jutted like a lighthouse to the northwest. A trio of darkspawn stood upon it. The glistening grey-skinned ogre looked like it had emerged from a vat of acid. Tattered, peeling hands the size of rocks hurled boulders at shadows of archers that dotted the Imperial Highway: erratic silhouettes against the gleaming paleness. But it was the second figure whose iron will shaped the Call. Bathed in lurid reflections of magic and flame, frenetically polished golden armour glinted wild, hard sparks. The creature's ornate two-handed sword was longer than Rilian's body. Darkspawn weapons were battlefield pickings - but Rilian saw the Hurlock had decorated the scabbard: those clear quartz crystals could only be found in the Deep Roads. She glanced down at the sheath of Adaia's dagger, which she had lovingly beaded with chips of red and green glass. Something hot burned the back of her throat: an absurd, hollow ache of sadness. That lipless, noseless face was seamed in pale folds of flesh, shrunken inward like the petals of a rotting rose. The flat, white expression was of unspeakable anguish. That empty, inhuman visage stared into her across the distance.
Rilian knew that, like her, her dark mirror saw this battle balanced on a knife edge. On the Hurlock General's command, the third figure - a smaller darkspawn - beat a primal cadence upon an enormous wardrum. The deep rumble rolled across the battlefield; a visceral, psychic awareness rippled across the mass of fleeing darkspawn. Rilian was aware of the low, voiceless thrum of the General's will: tiny sparks that lit the black sludge of mindless instinct; passed through the web like the capillaries of a single organism: mind to mind, blood to blood. The ripple became a stream, then a river, rallying to the drumbeat - out of the teeth of Loghain's trap. Rilian kicked her exhausted horse into a gallop. Racer managed a shuddering leap - then limped forward in a swaying, rocking motion like a child's toy. Darkspawn circled round, harrying her - a command to Ravenous protected her rear and flanks. In the howling darkness, he was a black, bloody-mouthed flame: leaping from the edges of her vision to rend and tear, then disappearing into shadow. Bestial, disembodied darkspawn screams rose around her - ending as choked, airless whimpers. Rilian screamed too, involuntarily, her muscles writhing with fatigue. She saw the first darkspawn to stand against her clearly, and after that they were a blur: snarling mouths, a rusted forest of dark-glinting weapons, exposed places to strike. She was suddenly aware of a dark, mounted figure riding at her side - gleaming plate armour smeared with red and black blood. The violet eyes were calm as chips of amethyst beneath the horned helm. It did not surprise her that the Sten of the Beresaad understood the situation as she did. She felt the warmth of his support like a physical touch. The drum dominated the battlefield, rolled over the distant bugles of Loghain's men, shrill whinnies of horses, and unending screams. Rilian and Sten cut their way forward, determined to silence it.
Rilian's sword was heavy - her whole body was heavy, weighted with exhaustion. Racer's head was bowed as though dark chains weighted him to the earth. The only thing she saw clearly was the grey-skinned monolith atop the rubble. Pale shreds of skin glistened in translucent rain; the droplets just beyond the edges of that swollen black cloud shimmered like silver curtains. The tableaux was backlit by Morrigan's primal magic. Rilian's retinas bore the imprint of those darting, luminous points. They splintered the darkness into myriad shadows, turned struggling figures into varied blacknesses, cast a weird shimmer over the muddy ground. The world was a shifting ambiguity - a conspiracy of light and movement that revealed only peril.
It was when she drew near - that glistening ravaged behemoth looming ahead - that Racer suddenly shied, and Rilian herself was smothered by unearthly cold. She knew the stench of darkspawn: a feral clench of atavistic life that burned above a pit of black hunger. This was the gust of a chill tomb - of clinical experimentation - of the ashes of a failed hope. A moment of uncontrollable imbalance - a rearing black wall - and Rilian was pitched out of the saddle. Her practice of the cavalry-style dismount saved her. On instinct, her right leg swung forward - up and over the lowered neck, hands grasping the base between the shoulders. She landed on her feet, the ogre filling her vision - lumbering towards her with strange simian ineptitude.
A mantle of silence dropped onto the world. Noise and colour and meaning - the cacophony of screams - luminescent motes of spelllight - drained away like blood from a wound. The shimmering indistinctness wavered and trembled; she saw the tableaux as if through a dark tunnel. Past and present collided. The near-delirious mind beneath the suffocating helm told her she had died: how else could she be facing the ogre - Duncan's ogre - killed at Ostagar? The gaping holes the twin daggers had cut into its chest revealed the white mesh of bone beneath the shreds of skin. The dead ogre and the Hurlock general in the armour of a dead king. The General charged towards her. Her body was a liquid flame of exhaustion inside the iron shell; her mind floated above, disembodied as a golem's. She felt like a shadow or her own ghost - and the sensation charred away her fear. A curious lightness filled her as she hefted the unbearable shield: the buoyancy of pure disinterest.
The two-handed sword screamed towards her - shattered the fine Dalish blade into a glittering explosion of shards. The Hurlock's boot struck her full in the chest. The Dragonscale muffled the impact. Even so, it was all but a knock-out blow, almost crushed her ribs. The world splintered into a howling, rain-lashed vortex as she tumbled, end over end, a body of pain in an earth and sky of darkness.
Rilian crawled through an ocean of mud. Rivulets of rain slithered like tentacles through furrows. White, clutching hands of dying men dragged at her limbs. Darkspawn claws were indistinct, coldly predatory things that lunged from dark fastnesses. Far above, distorted by the rippling depths of obscuring rain, grunting, panting exertion came to her as the straining of beasts. The struggling mass of men and darkspawn were faceless: mere muddy lumps with legs.
Two rotted boots - mere rags around mottled skin - loomed before her. The fetid stink burned her lungs; she retched convulsively. A long black cloud hovered over her - Rilian heard the whistle of her executioner's axe. It might have happened in the square - the punishment she had earned, before Duncan had saved her. She wanted to scream a denial: it could not end like this, after everything she had done...
"You will not harm her!" There was the ring of steel on iron. The young voice was familiar; Rilian struggled to place it, to get to her feet.
A squeal of agony - the thud of the dying creature. A vital, living presence gripped her with the strength of a tower; raised her up. Through the curtain of rain, the red-and-green emblem flickered like a many-coloured flame. The darkspawn had knocked the knight's helm askew; Ser Perth's young face with its startling purity of soul was drawn into planes and angles that spoke of years lived in hours. Specks of black blood dotted his skin like the seeds of some deadly flower. A spike of alarm shot through her.
"You've got to..." she began - and stopped, horrified, as a figure of nightmares lunged from the morass behind them. Ser Perth's reflexes saved him; he whirled, blade finding the creature's throat before the blow struck. The arc of the descending axe missed by inches - but it missed. The mass of darkspawn surged forward like a breaking wave. Ser Perth turned to face the next enemy; was soon swallowed by the tide.
Inhuman roars swelled behind her. Rilian turned back to the rain-ravaged, dark-glinting tableaux on the rubble. Ravenous circled the smaller darkspawn, who wielded a crude hand-axe. The abandoned drum lay like some strange rock: inert, faintly mournful. Ravenous reared up, muzzle gaping, forcing the darkspawn to shift backwards. At that the dog dropped to all fours and lunged.
The darkspawn was quick. The axe rose and fell. Ravenous yelped as the pitted blade glanced off his ribs, opening the flesh in a long ugly flap. Nevertheless, the dog's cry was muffled, because his teeth were fastened in the creature's thigh. A shake of the head severed arteries, stripped meat from the heavy, startlingly white thighbone.
Asala in hand, Sten fought the ogre: chips of armour and rotting shreds of cloth flying. His broad, armoured back was to Rilian. The monolith dwarfed him - but somehow Sten carried an equal presence of purpose. He dodged and rolled with the feral grace of a panther; surged to his feet behind the ogre. Asala's dark iridescence flashed once - twice. The ogre thudded to its knees, still in silence. Sten leapt. An explosion of weight and shadows and flickering light. Asala raised to the sky like a dark cross. When the point descended, there was no blood. A colourless fluid gushed from the neck. A stink like medicine and raw alcohol seared Rilian's throat.
Sten looked up - met her eyes across that distance. She gave an exhausted smile - punched the air - sharing triumph. Then a shadow loomed behind him like an open grave.
"Look out!" she screamed. As if in a dark dream, she saw the point of the General's sword burst through the armour-join at Sten's shoulder. The moment seemed to happen out of time, a simultaneous expansion of detail that hung suspended like an insect in amber: the hungry gleam of the point - the fine mist of blood that mingled with the rain - the way Sten's body jerked like a twitching marionette. His pain, his shock, registered in her. She felt the reptilian coldness of the blade plunge into his back; felt his disbelief and the bitter organic taste of death. A strange expression crossed the carved ebony features - the amethyst eyes widened - as if the battlefield were a revelation, had startled him with all he needed to know. Then slowly - an oddly graceful action - he slumped forward. The Hurlock jerked the obscene blade free - its eyes met hers - cold black stars in its desolation of a face.
She ran forward. Arrows drifted past: slow, trivial things. Her chest was a screaming mass of bruises; inside, the stunned emptiness had not yet begun to wake into intolerable pain. The sight of the filthy mass, moving to meet her through curtains of rain, blade dripping brilliant, vital rivulets of her friend's blood, was working in her an overwhelming amplification of her long helpless rage against the Blight. Horror and pity and disgust for this single creature stretched to encompass the wasteland of Ostagar and its ravaged multitudes of corpses: the glittering panoply of a bright generation, all cracked bones and crawling flesh that melted and pooled and oozed into the earth. Women dragged below to living graves: degraded, disintegrated, reconcatenated as monsters, bloated bellies gravid with futile multitudes of briefly animate trash.
And this, standing before her, was the target of her vengeance. Adaia's dagger tugged at her hand with its own sharp appetite. She flipped it to her right - knew the precise cut she would make. One part of her dispassionately calculated her chances: minute odds. Fang was a sleek, razor-edged weapon, glowing with lyrium-enchanted runes - but reach mattered.
And Rilian knew her assessment was right. But it was also wrong.
She would win.
She had to win.
The Hurlock roared and lunged for her. The tongue of steel led her as she dived and rolled - stabbed downwards. The sword whistled overhead and she scuttled behind the body of the ogre. She hid behind the filthy grey mass, streaked with that medicinal fluid and glittering rivulets of rain, the stench of an open grave in her nostrils. Sten had fallen forward and now lay beside the creature he had killed. Empty eyes lamented up into the falling rain. She crouched like a cornered rat - mind white and empty - eyes translating no more than those of an animal facing mortal danger. She peered upward into a vista of oblong shapes, distorting rain and flickering light: a mass of shadowy angles where all was confusion. The Hurlock was an indistinct dark smear, turning to follow her in a macabre game of hide-and-seek. By the second step the creature had crashed to one knee. She had cut the tendons in the heel.
Rilian gathered herself and sprang - onto its back, gripping with her limbs. She felt the spikes of its armour even through her own. The world exploded into a maelstrom of weight, screams, roars. She struggled with the blade - meant to cut its throat - but found the angle of her curled right arm made the move impossible. One massive, muscled, grey-skinned arm shot out and grabbed for the weapon - yanked it from her grip. Her scrabbling finger - a red-scaled spider - pierced the dark, lost hole of one eye. Her other hand thrust darkness, with equal thoroughness, into the left. The Hurlock roared - a bestial howl of agony - shook her as a terrier shakes a rat. She clung on for dear life, while the world turned over and over on a silent demonic sea. She felt the astonishment and black rebellion in the mind which had never known defeat - the Alpha, lone survivor of a brood of hundreds, the strongest of its siblings - felt the great dark mind batter against her own. Rilian tried to leap backward - then the golem-sized arms had her by the throat. Inhuman strength and iron will choked the life from the creature who had ended its own - insisted they join each other in death. Rilian writhed and wriggled and squirmed - managed only to twist her head round so that her right cheekbone brushed the Hurlock's left. With her last strength, she bit down upon the creature's ear, grinding her teeth into the rank palpitating feast, the explosion of blood in her mouth hot and bitter as tar. But the Hurlock was inexorable - those gauntleted hands were steel forged in fire of purpose. Air-hunger thinned and bled the world to a series of pale, attenuated shadows, falling away from her like scattered petals. The whirling white storm spun into empty darkness.
The pale arc of the Imperial Highway gleamed like marble. Nathaniel Howe stood, feet planted in the classic archer's stance, presenting the darkspawn with only his profile as a target. Below, the pile of rubble felled by the unstoppable ogre lay like the wreckage of some great cathedral. The howling, gibbering mass of darkspawn had been streaming north in a dark tide; the cavalry, many unhorsed, in pursuit. Then the visceral, driving bass of the Hurlock's wardrum called the creatures back. The contradictory ripple churned up confusion, like two opposing eddies of water. More and more darkspawn scrambled atop the rubble, pouring onto the road like creatures boiling up from the Abyss. Pir Surana pushed his way forward - Nathaniel heard the Elven leader's roar as he rallied his archers. Those in front drew slender swords - not their best weapon - and braced to meet the onslaught. In the rank behind, standing beside the Antivan and Orlesian, Nathaniel worked his bow with deadly precision. In human form once more, the Marsh Witch fought at the penetration. She was destruction incarnate. Encased in armour of living rock, she wielded her staff like a spear, point glowing with a nimbus of fire. It seared vicious wounds, boiling blood cauterizing instantly. A missile of flame crackled and roared. A darkspawn, engulfed, toppled into the maelstrom below, screaming a guttural name. Nathaniel wondered who it might be.
Darkspawn archers drew blood in plenty. Their own men staggered backward, clawing at wounds. The Orlesian turned from the darkspawn atop the road to shoot downward into the mass below. Understanding that she was aiming for the leader, Nathaniel joined her. She was taking shelter behind a statue of the Rebel Prince. Fastidiously - ludicrously - she brushed dust from the exquisitely carved folds of Maric's cloak. Only when she saw Nathaniel's incredulity did she realise where her preoccupation had taken her. A sheepish smile hovered about the bee-stung mouth; the liquid, jewel-bright eyes sparkled. Then she drew her graceful double-curved bow and sighted down the shaft. At once the almost light-hearted manner shrivelled to a mask of horror. Nathaniel looked - and saw the Qunari and ogre had joined each other in death; saw the unequal struggle between the Warden and Hurlock General. Warden and darkspawn were close as lovers: the red armour glinted luridly in Nathaniel's sights as she clung monkey-like to the creature's back. The only parts of the Hurlock's body not covered by the Warden's were encased in golden plate. Tears of frustration shone upon the Orlesian's softly-curved profile.
The Warden, in her struggles, was biting off the creature's ear. The golden arc of the Warden's cheek half-covered the Hurlock's like an eclipse. The darkspawn's face reflected the silver light of the Witch's magic like a pale moon. When the spell ended, it darkened to a ravaged crater. Surrounded by the roil of battle, the target was no larger than a coin - half the size of Nathaniel's seeking arrowhead.
"No, don't!" the Orlesian cried, "You'll hit the Warden."
"I fail to see the downside," Nathaniel murmured sotto-voce. In truth, he had far too much professional pride to deliberately aim for his own ally - but should he miss, and accidentally put an end to his father's murderer, he would lose no sleep.
His very unconcern ensured the accuracy of the shot. In a perfect singleness of purpose, freed from fear and hesitation, he sighted, drew, and loosed. Things looked bright and clear, as to the swooping eagle.
The arrow shivered - a sleek silver shard - cut through the air.
Struck.
The darkspawn poured into the valley like a single organism, stamping with forty-thousand feet and howling with twenty-thousand throats. The sound was the crash and roar of an ocean storm - like the great storm off Highever coast five years ago - and it rose to join with the falling rain, as though ground and sky had changed places.
Archers along the pale arc of the Imperial Highway and the amorphous darkness of the forest of South Reach turned the right and left flank into a shambles, funnelling the howling stream into the steel wall of pikes and lines of sword and shield.
The darkspawn hit the portable barriers. The first of the creatures simply threw their bodies across them, becoming living pathways for those that followed. The pikemen, surprised by the quick failure of their defences, fell back awkwardly, weapons too unwieldy for close combat. Watching their progress like a shepherd on a mountain trail, Loghain signalled to his bugler. Three short and two long trumpet blasts shook the air. The pikemen wheeled and counter-marched, moving in a clock-wise direction, parallel to the Highway.
The first of the black powder sacks exploded. The darkspawn checked as if the detonation were a wall. More sacks followed. Billowing red-gold flame illuminated some; silhouetted others. Skin the colour of ash was bathed in a glow like banked coals. The threshing pile howled in agony like an obscene single organism of many jerking limbs.
Loghain signalled again: two sharp staccato notes. Now was when the training and communications within Denerim's infantry would be tested to its limits. No-one born after the Orlesian occupation had ever retreated under pressure. He recalled Rowan's innovations with the cavalry: her tactics of lightning manoeuvre - strike and retreat, wheel and strike again. Trained infantry could do the same, albeit slower. Units attacked the darkspawn with disciplined cohesion - then stopped, and retreated. Invariably, the darkspawn pursued, only to be struck from a different direction by another unit. Loghain sucked in a breath as one of his men tried to shield-bash a darkspawn. The creature was not even slowed. But an instant before the crude pitted axe struck, the young man stabbed upward with his shortsword. The darkspawn tumbled backward with a cut throat. Others of his unit were not so lucky. Shrill pain ripped the brave fabric of war cries and exhortations.
His men were falling back: sullenly, carefully, fighting for every few yards of ground. Positioning units as a shepherd positions his sheep-dogs, Loghain rode about the chaos, directing the retreat just where it should go. Each member of Maric's Shield commanded a squad of ten - he saw Cauthrien, soulless battle-face streaked with sweat and rain, roar at one of her charges. The Warden's drunken Dwarven companion, red beard bristling in all directions, had ignored the strategy and flung himself at a mass of darkspawn like a four-foot juggernaut. Her gauntleted hand yanked him back. Loghain was sure she would have preferred to let the foul little berserker impale himself on darkspawn spears - but they could not afford the breach of discipline.
When they had retreated almost as far as the three units of Templars, Loghain turned his horse about and rode for the ridge. He passed Rylock, at the head of the central unit. Beneath the febrile glitter of her armour lay the heavy darkness of purpose. Between Templars and ridge, the four units that made up Loghain's reserve lay in wait. Eamon commanded the remainder of his men - all those not with the Warden or the Bastard Prince at Redcliffe. Loren and Ceorlic commanded the meagre forces they had managed to dredge up. Colourful banners billowed ostentatiously in the howling storm. Loghain disapproved. They were cloth, forming a square with sides about the length of a man's arm. Braces at top and bottom held them rigid at the top of their carrying staff; this made them difficult to handle in the wind, as the staggering bearers illustrated. Carried facing the enemy, they were easily recognised from front or back, but impossible to read from the flanks. Perhaps Eamon, Loren and Ceorlic hoped to cow the darkspawn with their family crests. The banners served as a dependable guide only to troops far in the rear - which was certainly the eagerly sought position of the three. By contrast, Arl Wulf, Bann Sighard and Arl Bryland led from the front - their troops fought alongside those of Denerim and Gwaren. They carried much smaller, unbraced banners: long and narrow, more easily rolled and hidden until needed for action. Once unfurled, they didn't get in the way. Arl Thomas Howe commanded the fourth reserve unit. To his credit, the young man had chafed at the position - but the inexperience of Lord Edelbrek's farmer levies and the barely leashed hostility between Highever and Amaranthine troops had worried Loghain. The unofficial "fifth unit" were the dog-handlers and mabari. Once the infantry had led the darkspawn into the trap - once the Templars' iron fist had smashed their lines - the war-dogs would help complete the rout.
Loghain rode up the long curve of the ridge, and found the mage and Templar standing over the bodies of four dead genlocks. Gazing down at the valley below, he waited for the moment. He viewed the field with the satisfaction of a farmer at harvest-time: through his careful husbandry, it stood for the reaping just as it should. His withdrawing infantry had spread from the Imperial Highway to the Drakon River, in the shape of a sickle blade. Enclosed in its curve were the darkspawn.
"Now!" he barked - and the Blood Mage raised his staff to the sky.
There was a lull in the battle - almost a stillness - the heavy pause before thunder. Then the units of infantry parted like myriad small waves around the three-pronged iron fist of Templars. The deep bristling mass of pikemen turned anti-clockwise - ponderously but smoothly, like an enormous door. A ripple among the black ribbons of darkspawn to the south told him the Warden's charge had begun.
...I've worked with Elven archers for thirty years - I never thought I'd see an Elven cavalry general. She understood my briefing - everything pat. But only half there - she had that look of Cailan...
Tangled images twisted in his mind like the poisonous snake of the Warden's story. He saw the lambent eyes dulled to opaque glass; the frivolous braids matted with blood. The number of Wardens in Ferelden cut to two: the frail Orlesian and the unreliable Bastard Prince. And if they failed – the country would be hostage to Orlais. Once more, Loghain cursed Riordan. The damned Orlesian had explained why Wardens were needed – but had refused to reveal the formula for the Joining Ritual. The Wardens' cache in Denerim palace had been empty. Plans and possibilities raced through his mind as rapidly as shuffled cards. He had only one hand to play: return to Ostagar and bring back the supplies left by the Wardens. After six months, any remaining mixture would be useless – but a Blood Mage might be able to recreate the formula...
Loghain frowned. Something was wrong. The ripple had slowed to a trickle – the darkspawn were bunched in a black tumour by the southern edge of the Highway. One of Gwaren's archers reported to him. Pir Surana's boy: built like a horsewhip – skin the colour of braised almonds – eyes that missed nothing. One of his finest young scouts – and, so rumour had it, hiding a spark of magical talent. Because of the service of the boy's father, Loghain contrived to remain ignorant – particularly in the presence of the Chantry.
"Ser – the Warden's through the gully. I haven't spoken to her – you said ride straight to you when I saw it. But I saw her there in the van – I saw her red plume. The Dalish have broken through – the right flank's rolled up. But the creatures are pouring onto the Highway – they have an enormous monster hurling rocks – a leader in golden armour – a war drum. Last I saw, the Warden was riding in that direction..."
...So – she has the right instincts. But even if she survives, she won't be in time. Once the creatures rally to the drum, they're out of the trap. And if they take the high ground...
"You've done well, soldier."
Loghain signalled to his bugler, and four short blasts summoned the reserve.
"Men of Amaranthine – to me!" Arl Thomas marched at their head, ruddy face flushed with excitement. Loghain dismounted – threw the reins to Surana – locked shields with the men in the front rank. Past the pikemen, they fought their way through the bunched mass of darkspawn with workmanlike determination. Loghain was instinct and training – more a force than a man. The Howe levies saw – cheered him – redoubled their efforts. Between the freeze-frames of combat - snarling mouths, crude weapons that menaced him, exposed places to strike – Loghain caught surreal images of the Warden's struggle. He saw with mingled amusement and pathos that, when the chips were down, the Knight of Redcliffe – the Finder of the Sacred Ashes – had abandoned helm and shield to fight in the only way a five-foot-five Elf could against a six foot, heavily-armoured General: like a gutter rat. He reached her just as the arrow seared past – drawing a furrow of blood across the Warden's cheek before exploding into its target.
The Warden was standing behind the kneeling creature - knee pressed forward into its spine - when next Loghain looked. Her face was a sweating corrugation of rage. One hand jerked the hairless skull upward to expose the throat. Back arched like a drawn bow and knife raised as she howled in tearless anguish. Her face long, attenuated – a screaming white skull – the skin of her cheek hanging down and mouth flecked with black blood. A butcher's image – a thing given over to murder. In the same thought-instant, he saw she cherished her hatred the way he nurtured his for Orlais. There was a stench of obscenity about it. Loghain – who had hunted chevaliers the way other men hunt animals – felt not distaste, but recognition.
He reached her – grabbed her shoulders – shook her. She blinked – pulled herself back from the brink of madness. Reluctantly – she was in a mode of being she did not want to leave.
"Warden: I need you to rally the cavalry – close the gap with the Dalish lines and push northward." She gave a brief nod – lambent eyes sane in the bloody mask of her face. He bent to pick up the arrow – recognised the colours of Howe in the fletching – looked to the white arc of the road and the tiny silhouetted figures. He himself – in his prime – would have missed that shot. Which made the young man the greatest archer he'd known. Unless – he had missed...
Dismissing the thought, Loghain led his men in a push northward, closing the gap between the cavalry and the Imperial Highway and tightening the noose. With the drum silenced, the flow of darkspawn dwindled to a trickle. Already, the archers had retaken the Highway – were turning the ground below to a shambles.
Twice, he caught sight of the Warden: saw that what she lacked as a warrior she made up for as a leader. She tore through the chaos like a living flame – organising, directing, fighting. One glimpse showed her gathering knights and Dalish into a mixed unit and sending them into battle. Another time, Warden and mabari were part of the fight. The dog attacked head-on – the Warden darted behind and finished the creatures off in a variety of close, messy, underhanded ways. Loghain approved. These were methods tried and tested by starving farmers on chevaliers. The glimpse lasted only seconds. In that time, Warden and mabari surrounded themselves with carnage.
The swarm of infantry, no longer running but following the Templars' push, closed the trap. They fought with the ferocity of men who knew they must win or die - then with the abandon of men discovering they need not be beaten twice. Surrounded, crushed against themselves, the superior numbers of the darkspawn were worse than useless. Panic was Ferelden's ally – and she clawed the creatures mercilessly.
Loghain signalled Cauthrien to open the way to the ashen curve of the Drakon River. A series of short, sharp trumpet blasts parted the north-eastern units. The darkspawn eased toward what they believed to be escape. At once, the reserve were after them: howling wardogs pressing in, hanging on the flanks, destroying those who turned to fight.
What had been a battle became a massacre.
It ended as all combat actions: in a lull pregnant with exhausted panting, the suffering of the wounded. Grey with exhaustion, Loghain leaned against the stark blackness of a skeletal tree, dying roots tainted with the oily sheen that floated upon the river. He heard in that silence the mixture of quiet and loss and fearful hope that comes to every combat survivor: alive, assessing cost.
He saw to the hospitalisation of the wounded - the burning of darkspawn dead and burial of their own. Cauthrien was his second self, knowing his orders before he gave them. The Warden reunited with comrades and soldiers - the Antivan, Orlesian, Dwarf, Marsh Witch and red-haired cousin were all unharmed. Soon, the mass grave yawned in the muddy ground - the smoke of death pyres formed an opaque and greasy pall like a giant lid - the meandering lines of men carrying wounded were heading northward, so coated with mud they seemed like shambling clay golems. The first thing healthy men did was head upstream, to wash away the unspeakable detritus. Downstream, the fish already floated upon water poisoned by darkspawn dead. In the choking wasteland – black rain falling through the smoke - the Warden walked among the dying world, limbs curiously disjointed, as though someone pulled her strings. He found her by the river, kneeling over the body of one of her dead. Blood formed a blackish pool that glittered darkly. One side of the dead woman's face was startlingly beautiful. The other was flayed off to show a bony grin. The Warden pulled off her gauntlets – very gently reached out and used the blood as glue to put the ruined skin back in place. Her own face was almost a mirror – a flap of flesh hung loosely from her cheek. She was drenched from head to toe in darkspawn blood – like some hero of old bathed in a river of death.
"I remember this," the Warden said softly, "They pulled her from the horse. Thank the Maker they only killed her." For Loghain, the morass of memories were already beginning to blur into the needs of the present and future; the Warden was living them still – trying to make real to herself events that could no more be grasped than time in the Fade, or delirium. He'd already heard the Orlesian composing a ballad in which the Warden fought the Hurlock General toe-to-toe. Perhaps the Warden would write an anthem for these doomed youth – not yet realising that the only honour one could give was not song, but silence.
She came to the body of the Qunari and knelt beside him: face dead with exhaustion but eyes glitteringly alive – boiling with unshed tears. She stared down into the carved granite face – the graven ebony features - the lifeless amethyst eyes.
"His people do not bury their dead. A Qunari is his role – his duty." One slender, supple hand reached down and very gently closed the eyes. "This – is no more him than a...a genie is its bottle. Meat only; the man has gone." The hand moved from the dead face to the glittering iridescence of the sword, beside it. She picked up sword and scabbard hesitantly – reverently. "He called Asala his soul. He could not have returned home without it. Now – if I live long enough – I will bring him home."
She rose, carrying the blade almost as tall as she on her back, as she would have carried a comrade from the field. Loghain gestured to her ruined cheek.
"You should get that tended to."
The Warden looked at him vaguely, still teetering on the edge of madness. Her other hand reached down to stroke the mabari's head. "Oh – I'll be alright. Ravenous is worse off than I am. But we're both immune to darkspawn taint."
The words strangled in her throat – choked by a realisation so monstrous she paled. Understanding hit Loghain low in the gut. He grunted at the force of it – felt his stomach contract to a burning, live coal.
"How...how many wounded do we have?" the Warden asked unsteadily.
Loghain forced his reply out like metal grinding on stone. "Five hundred. How many of those will become infected, Warden?"
The Warden stammered – waffled. "I...that is...it depends on the kind of injury. Magic – arrows – those wounds won't become tainted. Even sword-wounds – there's a chance - if there's no blood to blood contact." Her skin took on a greenish pallor. Her eyes were sunken – the closed mouth seemed to show beneath it the rigid grin of the skull. "But darkspawn coat their weapons in their own blood, like poison..." She turned away – bent double – was violently sick over the decaying ground. She backed away from her mess: clumsy, beastlike. But when she turned to face him the pupils glinted like sword-points within her hollow amber eyes.
"Ser Perth – saved me," she said, "He got their blood on his skin. Ser Maron put out his shield to cover me – they caught him under the arm. And the others...all of them...I have to see them."
Loghain smiled a graveyard smile. "Of course you do, Warden-Commander. As do I. We'll go together."
They made their way across the waste of dark and silence, toward the tallow-coloured smear of the hospital tent.