In the end, it was easier to get out of Denerim than anyone had predicted it would be. Outside the city walls it was a mess of bodies, a horde of citizens looking for passage out of Ferelden in the wake of the Blight and the Civil war. Most of them were women and children, some wounded, others obviously failing under the strain of the life of a refugee. A group of soldiers gathered around the gate, some with the livery of Gwaren, and more than once Aedan saw them gang up on an able bodied man and drag him into Denerim, never to return.
The nervousness of their own group increased when they saw the impromptu recruitment techniques in action, all of them wondering if they would get dragged off as well, and what would happen if any of the Gwaren soldiers tried it. They would try and fight as a group, without doubt, but after that? It could only get worse. However, apparently their status as traders leaving Denerim got them a first class ticket through the bustling crowd without a second look from the soldiers keeping people from climbing the walls. All in all, they couldn't have asked for a better send-off.
Their single-wagon caravan followed the Imperial Highway for most of the day, leaving the crowded gates far behind and traveled with a steady stream of refugees that were fed up with being abducted or denied at the capitol city and were heading to Amaranthine or Highever in hopes to charter ships to the Free Marches. It provided the perfect cover that they needed to safely get away from the city, and after a day of walking and only coming across one squadron of soldiers, they were in the clear.
The next day they started circulating watches. Half of the recruited men stayed close to the wagon in full armor, weapons at the ready. The other half were sent farther up the road, a handful of scouts in half armor ranging even farther to the sides. Aedan wanted no surprises coming their way, and with the extra scouts, there wouldn't be anyone sneaking up on them any time soon.
When the sun reached its zenith they switched watches, the ones doing the scouting switching places with the soldiers in full gear who got into half gear and went for scouting detail. Three were missing from the returning soldiers however, and half way through putting on his full gear, Aedan started getting worried about the three and very nearly sent out a scouting party to find out what happened. If they had been ambushed, it wouldn't mean anything good.
One of the men returned, running and breathing hard when he came on the wagon. Others immediately surrounded him, wanting to hear the news and what the reason was for him being late, but the man needed some time to breathe before he could properly make coherent sentences. By the time that Aedan made his way over, the scout had some of his air back.
"What's the news?" He asked, and the others made way for him, listening while mumbling to each other. Briefly Aedan flicked his gaze to the horizon, looking for the others similarly running to catch up. "Where is the other two?"
"I don't know about one of 'em, but the other is coming back separate, Ser." The soldier panted, straightening himself up. "Enemy scout found us. Tried to shoot him-" he thumbed at his quiver, missing a fletch from the standard two dozen. "Missed. Weavin' in and outta the trees. Thomas went after him to try and catch up, but we lost him in the underbrush."
Again, Aedan looked up hoping to see this Thomas coming around, but was disappointed when there was nobody coming their way. "Did you see the force the scout was attached to?"
The soldier nodded twice. "A small brigade of men. They were flying Highever colors, not Cousland, though."
He very nearly spat a curse, but restrained himself to just a narrowing of the eyes and clenching his fists until the metal of his gauntlet dug into the leather on his palms. "Howe's men, no doubt. They'll want to know what another Highever troop is doing out here and will come to investigate-"
"Runner!" Someone called at the head of the formation, and all eyes were drawn immediately to the call. Coming from the road ahead, a single scout was making his way to them, his stride even and not panicked, but obviously driven with a purpose. Aedan prepared himself for more bad news.
The scout wasted no time to finding his way to where Aedan was, stopping short and saluting quickly before delving straight into his report. "There's a band of soldiers heading straight for us. Amaranthine as best as I can figure, they're not wearing much in the way of heraldry or flying colors. Fifteen men I counted, some in pursuit of a lone man. More recruiting, I think."
"That could be Thomas." The first scout said, looking back from Aedan to the second returning scout, obviously worried for his comrade in arms.
"Seems like we've a problem on our hands." Aedan mumbled to himself, looking around at their immediate surroundings and wondering if there was any chance that they could make a better deal out of this. The Amaranthine soldiers they could handle, since they outnumbered them by three fold. But he wasn't so sure about the ones flying Highever colors. And there was still the issue of the missing scout. As much as he would like to save the man, it seemed like they were too pressed for time to attempt a rescue mission. "Everyone get into full gear." He commanded, projecting his voice over the gathered soldiers. "We're going to have to make a stand one way or another, so we might as well be prepared. Did either of you see somewhere defensible where we could barricade ourselves in?"
Both scouts glanced at each other, waiting a beat for the other to volunteer something helpful. When it became apparent that neither of them had any particularly good information, the second scout spoke up. "Ser, there was a fenced field up ahead with a steep hill around one side, but getting the wagon over the terrain would be hard. Recent rains to the north and east have made the ground soggy anywhere off the main roads."
"Nothing much behind us but open farm country and a scattering of trees." The other volunteered with an apologetic shrug.
Solona, having heard the majority of this conversation took the opportunity to step forward, closing in by Aedan's side and taking quick stock of the two scouts before shifting her staff off her shoulder and holding it to her side like a walking stick. "I could use my magic to even the odds a little."
The two scouts looked at her nervously, obviously showing that neither of them were particularly experienced in dealing with mages, but Aedan remained utterly unruffled. "What's your plan?" He asked, all business and strategy. There were a number of men under his care that were about to land themselves between a rock and a hard place. All of their lives were at risk. There was no room for flippant things like emotions, especially the kind that he wasn't entirely sure how to deal with.
"I know a couple of spells that when cast together will combine and be able to deal a lot of damage… But I'll be a bit useless afterwards. It takes a lot of manna to summon both spells combined." Solona bit her lip with a tad bit of nervousness, watching Aedan's features for the judgment to fall on her plan. "If the enemy soldiers were clustered up a bit, that would help. And we'd need some distance from them, or else we might get caught up in the spell."
Aedan dipped his head, considering, then nodded and looked up to the first scout that had made it back. "What kind of distance do we have on the Highever group?"
"A mile Ser." He replied immediately. "Maybe a little more."
"That gives us precious little time to play with, then…" Rubbing his chin, Aedan cast his eyes on the ground briefly, working through the problem almost visibly then turned abruptly and found his second in command, a burly man that looked like he could wrestle an ox and win and bore the scars of many battles. "Brom, we'll continue down this road toward the Amaranthians. If they've been sent on a course to meet with the Highever force, then we can pretend we're them until they figure out the ruse. If they aren't looking for Highever soldiers, then hopefully we can just pass by and rely on Amaranthine's and Highever's alliance to keep us out of trouble. Tell the men to have their weapons ready."
With a salute and a grunt of understanding, Brom turned and bellowed out the orders to the rest of the men who took to action immediately now that they were being given something to do. Turning back to Solona, Aedan took her aside slightly. "Your orders are different. You'll stay at the back of the party and out of the way if we get into a scuffle. You-" he pointed to one of the scouts, "will keep an eye on the road, so trail behind us. The moment you see the Highever force catching up, you sprint back up here and warn us. Solona, the second they're in range, you cast your spell. It's risky enough that we might have to take on the Amaranthine force, I don't want to be between the two of them when they find out that we're not loyal to their lord."
"I understand." Reflecting all of Aedan's seriousness, Solona nodded and held her staff tighter, quelling some of her nervousness. All around them the soldiers were moving, the wagon loaded with their necessary supplies for the trip moving along at the slow horse's clopping pace. Everyone was in full armor now, bearing the Highever crest like they had every right to be doing so and weren't in truth a bunch of refugees that had simply banded together under their old colors. They were all tense for there was no thought that they wouldn't see a fight. It was just a matter of how many and when.
The first glimpse they caught of the Amaranthine force was when they rounded the peak of a small hill. The force of fifteen was split in half, some of them marching in file with a handful of lagers behind, and then another four who looked to be escorting a single man well behind the original column. From here it was hard to tell the features of the apparently captured man, but he definitely wasn't Thomas. The man looked more like a scraggly farmer from this distance; another casualty of the ongoing civil war.
When the Amaranthine soldiers first saw the Highever imposters there was some pointing and general muttering, but otherwise they didn't appear to react. Well, at least they hadn't been tipped off beforehand about their true identity. Heading off their own column with Brom in tow, Aedan wondered if they would simply be allowed to pass. He could only hope that was the case. When the two marching forces were within stone-throwing distance from one another, the Amaranthine troop leader called a halt to his men who ambled to a stop, obviously all of them either tired or lacking proper training in column marching. From the way that more than a handful of them awkwardly carried their armor, Aedan would have put his silvers on a bet that they were new recruits.
Signaling for a halt to his own forces, they stopped on command far more orderly than the bumbling farmers-turned-soldiers and he walked forward with Brom at his side, meeting the leader from the Amaranthine forces half way.
"You got orders for us, Ser?" The soldier asked, stopping a few feet away and waiting to hear whatever news was about to befall them. He took a moment to assess Aedan, a brief flicker of disappointment flashing over his face before it was covered again by a road-weary and vaguely bored expression. These young pups. Who gave them the right to be leading men?
"No." Aedan replied, sounding just as bored. "Carry on as you were."
The soldier did perk up at that, surprised that there was nothing further to be done for his small band of men. Apparently, he had been expecting something else entirely. "Nothing at all Ser?" He asked, the disbelief even more clear in his voice. "Last orders we were given ended with us meeting up with your company here for further instruction."
With a casual shrug, Aedan tried his best to look disinterested and slightly apologetic. "Change of plans, I guess. We weren't given any message for you."
"Damn politicians can't make up their minds…" The man muttered under his breath rolling his eyes to the sky in exasperation. "We'll attach to your unit, then. You're headed to the front, right? Maker knows we'll do better there than wandering around the Bannorn playing at protection. We're soldiers, not damned city guardsmen."
Shaking his head perhaps a little too quickly, Aedan held up his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Might want to head back to Amaranthine if you haven't got pressing orders. You never know what the Teyrn's got planned. We're just reinforcements."
From the back of the company Solona watched the discussion between Aedan and the Amaranthine soldier dragged on, growing more nervous the longer the two talked. She knew time was short, and wasn't this exactly what Aedan wanted to prevent? It seemed like with every passing moment the chance that they would get caught in the middle of the two forces. Looking back over her shoulder, she looked at the horizon for a peek of the oncoming Highever forces and swallowed hard. Was that a banner just peaking up over the next hill?
Her eyes caught movement off to the side and she looked just in time to see the scout assigned to warn them of the oncoming forces sprint out of the cover of the trees and onto the hard-packed dirt of the road. With her heartbeat rapidly starting to pick up, she focused on the horizon, taking a deep breath and calming herself. Right. Everyone was relying on her to even the odds a bit, and that's precisely what she was going to do.
Reaching out to the flow of the Fade was a bit like trying to grab water. Tapping into it always sent shivers down her spine, the feeling of coldness a brief shock, but she anchored her willpower to that feeling and dragged the slippery strands of surrealism out of the place where it dwelled deep inside her body. Once brought forward it cloaked her physical form and when Solona opened her eyes it was to see the soldiers nearest her backing away from the sudden display of magic, the soft blue glow covering her body enough to make them nervous.
Pointedly ignoring their fear she held her staff to the side in one hand and began tracing a complicated series of lines and circles in front of her, the tendrils of the Fade carving thin lines in the very air. When the figure was complete and the spell set, she grabbed the twisting lines in her hand, the magic like a hard ball in her clenched fist and abruptly swung the head of her staff into her palm, slapping the magic into the weapon with a spark of cold that flared out between her fingers. Immediately the staff began to glow with the same soft blue that surrounded Solona, the power inside of the weapon near vibrating it with the magic it held back. Twisting the staff and gripping it with both hands, Solona slammed the butt of the staff into the ground in front of her, streaks of frost shooting out to either side and coating the dirt.
At the bottom of the hill where the Highever force was advancing the symbol she had carved into the air flashed briefly on the ground in a vivid blue light and disappeared just as fast. She could see the ripple of unease that went through the marching troops; all of them obviously already ready to do battle with their naked swords gleaming in the sunlight. For an uneasy handful of seconds there was dead silence, then a screaming wind kicked up over where the mark had appeared, a vortex of snow and hail literally springing up out of nowhere.
The reaction on all sides was immediately apparent. A number of soldiers caught in the storm were knocked over by the sudden whipping wind. Horses panicked and screamed above the howling wind, sent sideways and rolling over armored men. The soldiers around her were just as stunned, some simply watching in open awe while others scrambled to get away from her, moving quickly to the center of their gathered forces. The Amaranthine soldiers were alerted by all the noise that the spell was causing, a few of them drawing their blades.
"What in the name of bloody Andraste is going on?" The leader asked, drawing his blade and looking up first at the mage woman on top of the hill, then to Aedan and Brom.
Without waiting for an order, Brom drew his great sword and swung it down in a broad arc. The Amaranthine soldier barely had time to react, raising his sword in an un-braced block. The man stood no chance against Brom, and was cut down on the spot, collapsing in a bloody heap on the ground.
Turning quickly to his men, Aedan raised his sword and pointed it toward the Amaranthine force, sliding his shield over his arm. "Attack!" Overhead a dozen arrows let fly, whistling through the air and came down over top of the enemy troops, one or two immediately dropping with fletches sticking out of their necks and a couple of others crying out with newly acquired holes in their bodies. The clattering of armor quickly covered up the screams of injured men however, Aedan's rebel forces charging forward on their leader's command and engaging the enemy.
Up on top the hill Solona was near finished casting a second spell and when she let the magic loose over the already chaotic blizzard ripping around over the Highever troops, things got even more chaotic in the blink of an eye. The mini storm was illuminated from the inside with magic, the flashes of light nearly blinding in their intensity. An unearthly howling started from the center of the storm, at first a dull roar that grew quickly into a high-pitched fluctuating scream punctuated from booms of thunder. A long funnel formed from the center, the sky high above becoming dark with heavy clouds and connected, the lightning streaked tornado thrashing the already harassed soldiers below with the summoned force of nature.
The wind from the tornado could be felt from the top of the hill where Solona stood, breathing like she'd just run a marathon and leaning heavily against her staff, watching as the work of her spells unfolded. The storm fed off of her magic, the tight controlled weave of mana leaving her at an alarming rate until the spell had taken all it needed, the storm self-sufficient now as it kicked up clouds of dust and men, throwing them around and off their feet, into each other, horses, the ground and other debris. Their screams were terrible, but she listened anyway. This was her doing, and she'd see it through.
Below the clash between the Amaranthine forces and the Highever rebels was drawing to a swift close. In the initial attack at least five soldiers had simply dropped their weapons and run in the opposite direction, the price of battle far too rich for their blood. Another three dropped to the ground on their knees and begged for mercy, surrendering right away. The remaining handful of soldiers fought briefly, but overwhelmed as they were by the numbers of the rebels they were quickly killed and put to rest. There wasn't time for celebration, for as the last man fell and they had the surrendered soldiers surrounded Solona came running down the hill.
"They're on us!" She yelled over the general noise, the soldiers parting way for the still blue glowing mage, none of them wanting to be accidentally or purposely turned into a frog for getting in her way. "I did what I could, but most of them have made it out…"
Looking up to the sky, Aedan saw the base of the funnel cloud over the peak of the hill that separated them from the approaching enemy forces, the clouds high above streaking with forks of lightning and the chill of the air created by the storm strong enough here to make him shiver in his armor. "Turn about!" He commanded and the archers who had been standing halfway up the hill fell back to the rear, readying their shots as the rest of the force moved forward, prepared to meet the charge.
"You three!" Gesturing to a few soldiers that had run to the front lines with him, Aedan stopped them before they could get to the new front. "We need someone back here to watch them." He flicked his sword briefly at the kneeling soldiers who had surrendered. "I don't want them getting any funny ideas and down our whole force from behi-" He looked again at the men on their knees and stopped dead mid syllable, his eyes going wide as he stared at what he thought had been a scraggly farmer captured by the Amaranthians. With quickened steps and his heart in his throat, he quickly walked over to the man, who lifted his head when he saw Aedan's boots come into view and the two met gazes for a long moment.
Aedan inhaled sharply, dropping his sword in the dirt and practically fell on his knees in front of the man, his hands pausing a few inches from grabbing his shoulders. "Fergus?"
CHOO CHOO! All aboard the cliffhanger express!
Super late chapter update this time :/ this might become normal, unfortunately, since "Video Production" is a six syllable synonym for "death". But I'm determined to get this out every week if possible! So thanks for hanging with me guys. Also, I haven't yet decided if next week I'll resolve this cliffhanger, or if I'll jump back to Denerim and see what sort of trouble Kallian's getting into. Whatchu guys think?
Also, thanks to everyone sending in their reviews. It really helps to inspire despite the time crunch, and I can't be thankful enough. Again, sorry for the late chapter, and see ya'll next week.