As murder attempts went, this one was moderately well thought out. Four of them waited for a night strike, dressed in dark clothes, faces smudged with soot or dirt. They hid their weapons until the moment came to attack to avoid a giveaway gleam of moonlight on metal.
They did not want all of the group, only the wardens - the bastard prince and the Circle mage. Without those two as their center, the others would disband.
They lurked outside the circle of firelight, using the forest for cover from the unsleeping eyes of the golem, and attacked together on some silent signal when one of the wardens strayed into the darkness to answer some call of nature. True professionals, they did not play games of threats or negotiation.
Their one failing was that the first blow was not a killing blow.
The initial almost subliminal whump of a mind blast pulled most of the camp out of sleep to wonder if they had heard something or only dreamed it. Doubt fled when blinding light flared in the darkness followed by the screams of men on fire.
From one breath to the next, men and women shook off sleep, grabbed their weapons, and ran, not knowing what waited for them in the night, only that they had so many enemies that identification could wait until they were looting the corpses of the fallen.
Zevran, finding the space next to him empty when he woke, arrived first, in time to be bowled over by a running man in robes who bore him to the ground in time to avoid a explosion of blood and bone that leapt from one attacker to the next in a chain reaction of carnage and death.
Zevran pushed Widald Amell off of him and sat up to see the grim scene illuminated by burning brush and leaves. Above their heads, a rib bone stuck out of a tree trunk, viscera hung from tree limbs like decorations from some dark demon's ball, and every surface the light touched was painted red with blood.
Alistair caught Wynne before she could see, turning away with a sickened murmur of "Maker preserve us" as he led her back to the camp.
Sten took in the destruction with a comment in Qunlat that none of them could decipher. Saarebas.
Morrigan nodded. "Twas well done," before she returned to her corner of the camp.
The others left without comment, giving Dal time to heal the wounds he had taken and wring the worst of the blood out of his robe. While he worked, Zevran walked through the bloodied scene, checking bits of corpses for valuables. He looked admiringly at the carnage before turning to Dal with a gleaming smile. "All these months we have traveled together, and I never knew you were an artist."