BioWare owns all but what I made up. : )
WARNING! The next few chapters are going to deal with some ugly and emotional imagery from violence. I wanted to warn any who may not like to read that sort of thing or those who are younger audiences. Rest assured I will always try and deal with it in a sensitive manner. But I wanted to give you all fair warning, and I did not want to change the rating to M, as it really won't need to be. I am just trying to be considerate and take care of my fans. I care for you all, and so it with that in mind that I am issuing a warning.
I hope you all liked Rajed's demo with his weapon and his run in with Gnat. I am a terrible tease. And now Kai has to worry about some of the soldiers who were Kylon's men with their families being discovered and taken hostage. Not to mention poor Arl Wulff.
Shout out to Night Hunter MGS, my beta reader, my friend, and my idea man. For the lemons, for the support, for your brilliance. I thank you! : ) Oh, and an homage to one of my favorite movies "Gladiator," and the Romans. A quick death, a warrior's death, was to put a sword to the back of someone's neck and put it through the vertebrae. It is supposed to be a quicker more painless way to die.
And Author shout out goes to Lothering Rose here on FF, and odiedragon on the forum for "Rusted Cage," "Terrible Beauty," and other fantastic works. Really, an author worth checking out. The Nightwatch for the story "Halted," which is a Duncan/Fem Cousland romance. When I first played, I wanted to bed Duncan in the worst way. So, for any of you with a Duncan crush, this one is for you.
And to our Ladyamesindy for "Do You Trust Me?"
My thanks to you all of course. My lurkers, my reviewers, my fans. I can't thank you all enough. And thanks to the people who have added this story and me to favs and alerts. My appreciation goes out to The Golden Echo, SlowNomad, Mirima, Kimbo42, Morrigan 21, The Nightwatch, and Ette Meyer. I am constantly amazed that I get emails on a daily basis saying more of you have added it. I am so grateful to have such wonderful fans. As always, keep those ideas coming, whether in reviews or those personal emails. I love to hear from you, and I never know when something you say is going to inspire me. : ) Don't be shy, I don't bite...much. : D
Blessings!
NOTE: I'm very slow in posting new chapters this weekend. I mean even slower than I have been, for which I apologize. I hope you will forgive me. I have company this weekend. Mum and Dad, plus dogs. I have been cleaning, so that is why I have been lax in my usual updates. And they are here now. I am hoping to have this out. But again, mea culpa dear friends. : ( I do beg your indulgence. I am so sorry, and no the story has not died, far from it.
Kai stood in one of the empty, long forgotten corridors of the fortress of West Hill, Arl Wulff's holding. It had once been an important look out for Corsairs, but as the marauding pirates had become less of a threat, West Hill had fallen into disrepair, and its watchtowers abandoned. Now it was most famous as the site of King Maric's defeat at Meghren's hands due to treachery.
The fort itself which could hold thousands now only held a tenth of that. It had become one big storage facility for all intents and purposes. Massive hallways and passages were often dark and abandoned. It was a huge maze, and anyone could become lost and die, never to be seen again. Or so Kai had imagined when she was a little girl. The Couslands had visited frequently, since West Hill was a close neighbor to Highever. And while it was true that her father and mother had warned her, very sternly, never to go wandering off in West Hill alone, her Scath whom she had sent to map out the place had not come across any pitiful remains of long lost persons despite her childhood imaginings.
Kai had figured that as it could hold thousands and only held hundreds, that a good number of the soldiers who had turned against Anora, and their families, could safely meld into the general West Hill population and no one would be the wiser. And Anora shouldn't have, been the wiser, that is. How they had been discovered Kai had yet to figure out, but one of Anora's noble toadies had. Useless to figure out how the Mabari got out of the kennel once it was already gone, best to concentrate on getting it back. Or so Nan had drilled into her as a child.
And so it was that Kai and her group had ridden hard to Highever. She had gathered a number of her Scath and her usual crowd. Kai had wanted Fiona to come, the more healers the better, but Fiona had insisted on staying with the twins and Fergus. When Kai had argued that the woman was a powerful mage and not some twinkle fingered babysitter, Fiona had laughed. She pointed out that she had abandoned Alistair, and she was not about to abandon her grandchildren or Fergus. She was going to protect them no matter what might happen. She explained to Kai, with steel in her dark eyes, that she had her family back, and if Arl Wulff and the soldiers had been uncovered, who was to say that Anora might not look at Fergus and Highever, being such close neighbors? Especially with Anora's paranoia growing by leaps and bounds. Fiona had made it clear in no uncertain terms that if anyone even looked at Fergus or Highever, she would blast their very eyes from their heads. It was then that Kai was even more grateful for Fiona, and truth be told, the way Fiona looked, Kai was afraid she would turn that fire on her if she argued. It certainly made her feel slightly better at leaving the twins behind with Fergus.
So it was that she, Zev, Naseel, Zaeed and Gnat stood in the empty hallway waiting for their appointed meeting. They all, being rogues, were able to sneak, a concept that she had to patiently explain to Sten and Shale who had wanted to attend. Their insistence had made her smile.
Kai could see the broken tiles, the dust on the floor and caked into the wrinkles of the cloth covering the low slung piece of furniture on which she leaned. The sheet, which she supposed had been white at some point, was now a dull grayish brown. Occasionally breezes would blow down the corridor from elsewhere in the castle carrying with it murmurs and sighs. It would lift the cobwebs gracing the paintings now obscured by the varnish turning black. The portraits and landscapes all looked as if they were being viewed through a window upon which someone had thrown watery mud. The effect was to have only parts of the paintings visible. An eye here, a tree or maybe it was a rider on a horse, there. It was easy to see why the place had the reputation of being haunted.
"Scathach?" Kai and the others turned to face one of her Ferelden Scath, Cass. Cass had been assigned to go with the soldiers dispersed to West Hill. Cass told them how Anora's men had shown up at West Hill in the middle of the night. They had gained entrance by saying they were on their way to Redcliffe and needed a place to stay. Before the Arl could be called as host, they had attacked, rounding up everyone to the last child. If the searchers found any hidden armor which indicated the owners were not one of the West Hill Knights, they were separated along with their families. They had one of the nobles of Denerim called in to point out soldiers he knew. They had packed them all in prison wagons they had hidden down the road until they had everyone. "But that is not the half, Scathach. They arrested the Arl as well and packed him into a wagon!" Cass's face remained neutral, but her eyes showed her dismay.
"Do you know where they were taking them?" Kai clenched her fists. It was very bad news indeed if they had taken Wulff as well.
"I had Trynt follow them, but his orders were only to follow, not to take action. We are only two. I told him that where they went was of the utmost importance for you to know, Scathach." Kai nodded and grasped her arm. "Trynt followed them to one of the old watch towers still standing along the coast. They were taken there." Kai and her party snuck back out of West Hill to meet the others in the forest as they had arranged earlier. She had told them not to set up camp, as she was not sure how long they were going to be at West Hill itself. She hadn't even let them unsaddle the Ceffyls.
It had been afternoon when Kai and the others had gotten to West Hill and met with Cass. By they time they rode up the coast, or in the case of Sten and Shale ran up the coast, dusk was falling into the bowl of night. Kai had all of them fan out and stay low, hiding behind the big boulders that dotted the open space of the point of land where the ruins of the watchtower stood. The crumbling stone structure sat on a slightly jutting point of land between West Hill and Highever. There was one smaller hut made of stone next to the tower visible from their vantage point.
From what Kai could see, there were only a handful of soldiers, and she could see none of the prisoners. She saw the soldiers had piled up what looked like wood and put it to the torch. When the wind shifted and the black smoke drifted over the land instead of out to the Waking Sea, she knew what the bonfire was really made of. The bile crept up her throat. The smell of burning human flesh was unmistakable, even as faint as it was from where they were. Maker, they were too late after all. She felt light headed and had to put her hand out on the boulder to keep herself from falling over. She placed her forehead on the cool stone. Late, too late, always too late. More death, more destruction by her or because of her. Would it never sodding end?
"Kai, Kaidana." It was Zev's voice that broke through her dark thoughts. "That pile cannot be all of them. There may be some still alive. We need to find out." His hand gripped her shoulder. She looked at him, almost through him, but his hand helped ground her. She realized that she and he had not had any sleep for going on two days now. She nodded and took a handful of cold water from her canteen and patted it across her eyes and her cheeks before replacing the veil in the hood of her cloak. With hand signals and via the procul globe, she had her Scath and friends start moving forward now that it had turned dark.
They made their way forward. Anora's men had lit torches and were sitting or standing around the fire drinking, eating and joking as if the fuel for their fire was nothing more the usual firewood. Kai felt her inner abyss trying to snap its leash. She managed to keep it locked down as she crept up on one man who had started to walk away from the others in the dark to take a leak against one of the stones. She put her dagger between his ribs and flicked it, cutting his aorta. His eyes got wide, but he made only a muffled little gasp. She had stepped away before he had even finished falling.
And so it went, they picked off the ones furthest from the fire, one by one. The rest they leapt upon from the shadows and surprised. The men fought back. But half drunk or all drunk and caught unawares, they fell easily. Kai spared one last look at the burning pile, swallowing hard, before turning to go towards the tower. Her forward progress was stopped by the sound of the wooden door to the stone hut next to the tower being thrown open as the drunk and sleep dazed leader appeared in the doorway. "Can't you keep it down you bunch of dung eating sons of wh..." The man's commentary was halted by Sten grabbing the man with one hand and lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the cottage's stone wall. The man's eyes got wide as his face turned purple. "Shall I break his neck, kadan?"
"No, I have questions for him. Just keep him out of the way and out of commission for the moment." Kai turned when she heard as strangled yell. Sten had tossed the man like a rag doll, as if he were playing a game of catch with the stone giant. The man landed against Shale's large stone torso to fall at the golem's feet, where he slumped with blood trickling down his face from a cut in his head.
Shale shrugged at Kai. "Oops." Shale picked him up by the scruff of the neck, giving him a shake. The man moaned. "Not completely broken then."
Kai shook her head and went to the tower and opened the door. The inside was black as the space between the stars. There was a hissing sound, but it was the smell that hit her first, the iron acrid smell of blood and a lot of it. Kai dreaded looking in there with every fiber of her being, though she knew she had to. She turned and grabbed a torch from near the fire. She walked back to the doorway and paused a moment before she walked through the door, the torch held high. At first she couldn't take it all in. Her mind just couldn't process fast enough. Her heart beat so fast and her stomach wanted to crawl up her throat. Impressions of blood pooled everywhere. Dead eyes stared at her. The hissing had been rats, crawling over the bodies. The rodents squeaked and scampered from the light of the torch. She had to close her eyes and try to breathe. Her foot slipping in the blood brought her back; she hadn't even realized she had been moving forward.
"Warden, you need to see this." No, I don't. I really, really don't. A part of her wanted to giggle, the part that was slowly creeping up on hysteria. She was afraid if she started giggling she would start screaming and throw herself off the cliff. She buckled it down and walked over to Oghren who was pointing at one of the bodies while holding his own torch. It was Arl Wulff and next to him lay Gwydion, the knight whose sister had been raped. Arl Wulff had adopted the young soldier and his sister according to her Scath. Wulff had lost his two sons to darkspawn while Loghain had tried to pretend there wasn't a true Blight. She stood looking down at both of them for a moment. From the positions of the bodies, it was obvious that Gwydion had tried to protect the old Arl.
I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry kept echoing in Kai's head. She was too late yet again. Damn the Maker and his Bride, the Black City take them both! And take her with them, come to that. They sent her back for what? Another abject failure on her part? No, no, no, no, NO!
"KAI!" Alistair's voice sounded in her ear. Kai swung a fist out, her knuckles connecting with the stone wall, and hardly felt them crunch with the impact, a guttural yell escaping her lips. Just as quickly, she felt the tingle of healing magic as she turned to see Wynne's hands glowing from the spell she had just cast. Kai stood looking at the mage for a moment, their gazes locked. Then Kai bent down and gently closed the men's eyelids with a shaking finger. The pain, however brief, had snapped her back.
She made herself stand and take a good look around the room. Kai saw something that registered in the back of her mind rather than her conscious front. The front wanted to be unconscious, preferably due to alcohol and a lot of it. But she looked again, forcing that part of herself which was screaming in horror telling her Run, RUN AWAY NOW to shut the sod up. There were bodies everywhere, but it was one in particular that made her take a longer look. Maker, was that a...? The others came in behind her. She walked as carefully as she could; it was like walking on ice, slick. Then it registered, it was the body of a woman. She lay on her side, her arms, even in death, wrapped around her burgeoning belly. A hole made by a sword slit the rounded mound of her stomach. Kai wanted to look away, but couldn't. She had to confirm what she thought she saw. Something small and pale showed.
She felt her head spinning as she knelt, heedless of the blood pooling around her knees. A tiny hand, its five little perfect fingers each tipped with little fingernails rested on the cloth of the skirt. They had stabbed the woman through her abdomen, then slit her throat. Kai felt the world tilt and her vision go black. Then, she vomited. She thought the retching would never stop, bile burned her throat. Tears ran down her cheeks, whether from the effort of her stomach to dislodge itself from her body or because of what she saw, she could not say.
It was the feeling of a hand on her shoulder, two hands, that had her wiping her mouth on her forearm. Naseel and Zevran helped her get back up. She walked back to the door and took one last look back. She looked at Arl Wulff. She looked at Gwydion. She looked once more at the woman. Her abyss snapped its leash. The human part of herself watched as if from a distance. The world tilted back, coming into sharp focus. She saw everything as if her mind were keeping it all, every second, marked. Her vision was as clear as glass. Kai looked at the blood on her hands. She marked how it ringed the nails, sinking into the cuticles and the sticky feeling it made as she clenched and unclenched her fists. Her mind carefully noted the sticky sucking sound her boots made as she walked out of the tower. She strode forward to the man still sitting at the feet of golem. He was awake now. He sat rubbing his head, looked up and saw Kai coming for him. His eyes got wide, his face pale, as if he were looking at darkspawn broodmother. He tried to crawl backwards away from her. He couldn't go through the golem, who merely picked him up and set him on his feet.
Kai had her daggers drawn and was going for the man's belly, her only thought to slit him open, spill his guts and make him watch as she pulled them out slowly, in inches. "Kai, Kai, KAIDANA!" It was Zev's voice and his desperate grab for her that spun her around. She growled and raised her daggers.
"Stay out of my way, Zevran! I am going to make him scream so loud it will be heard all over Thedas and right to the nug humping Maker himself. I am going to make him wish he had never been born. So if any of you are squeamish," Kai looked at Wynne, "then you had better stick your fingers in your ears and look away. The bastard is mine, and we are going to dance." Kai flipped her daggers in her fingers and started forward again. She barely noticed the man was already blubbering and that even the golem was having trouble holding him in place. Zevran grabbed her again. She snarled, and it took everything not to let her abyss turn on him.
The detached part of her brain noted that her abyss hadn't quite snapped the leash after all. She had unmuzzled it and given it more of the lead to run on, but it wasn't quite free, yet. "Kai." Zev grasped her wrist gently. "Kaidana," he used the tone of voice he used for her in private. It was soft and did more to stop the monster in her from running all the way to the end of its tether than his touch. "Think, the bodies in the tower. Did you notice anything odd?"
"What I saw was death, a lot of it. The Arl and Gwydion. Including a pregnant woman and her..." Kai swallowed hard lest she vomit again, "...and her baby. Do you mean there was something more odd than that?" She glared at him.
"The only woman in the room was her, and the rest were all elderly." He looked at her with a pleading look, his hand reached up to stroke her cheek. "There were no children, no young boys, no women of childbearing age. Where are they, Kaidana, if they are not here?" Zev put his hand on her shoulder. "We need to ask him questions. They must still be alive, and we need to know where they are."
Kai nodded. She looked at Shale and nodded again. She walked up to the man and grabbed him by the front of his armor. The golem nodded back and let him go. He started to try and run, Kai thrust her stiff fingers forward in a quick jab to his throat. He stopped trying to get away as he was too busy trying to breathe.
Kai tossed him into the hut. The back room contained a bed, and the larger front room he'd come out of had a small kitchen area. Kai kicked the man, her dwarven steel toed boots catching his ribs in a sickening crunch making him roll further into the room. "Get up." Her voice was cold as Winter. The man lay there panting. "I said get up, you Maker forsaken bastard." She nodded at Sten who had come in, and the giant picked up the man. Kai waved to the kitchen and one of the chairs there. Sten drug the man over and sat him in a chair with no more effort than as if it were a child, not a full grown adult, he held. She took out some leather ties for armor that she always had on her, since she never knew when one might break. She tied the man's hands behind him and his legs to the chair legs.
Zevran had been quietly rummaging around the kitchen area. He held a bowl of lemons and a sack of what looked like salt. Kai cocked an eyebrow at him. Then it occurred to her, they weren't going to polish armor or weapons with the salt and lemons. They could be used to cause pain without real harm. She gave him a grim smile.
Once again, he gently grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. "Kai, perhaps I should do this. I have more experience in these matters, no?"
She grasped his hand. "No, I am not going to let you stain your soul more, and I am not going to let someone else do what I am unwilling to do. I am the leader, this falls to me." She leaned in so the prisoner would not hear. "Thank you, my dear friend."
She let her abyss show in her eyes and turned towards the man in the chair. "I have some questions, and I would like answers." Kai took a lemon and cut it in half with one of her daggers and dipped it in the salt sitting on the table. She walked over, showed the prisoner the lemon half and then she ground it into his head wound, making sure the juice and salt mixed. The man let out a high pitched squeal as he squirmed in his chair. She waited until he stopped screeching before taking the other half of the lemon and squeezing it into his eyes. Again he gave out screams, tears running down his face.
She grabbed his chin forcing him to look at her with streaming eyes. "If you don't answer my questions truthfully. If I even think you are lying in the smallest way, I will cause you such pain. And I will enjoy every minute of every hour of it. And I do mean hours." Kai began pacing in front of the man. "The lemons and salt, they are just the warm up. By the end of it, I will cut your manhood off, cauterize the wound and cook it up and make you eat it. That will be for the woman in the tower and her baby. And when you are done feasting on your own cock, I will cut open your belly." Kai walked over and grabbed a broom sitting in the corner of the room. "And I will take out your intestines and I will wrap them around this broom handle. I will wrap a few inches every hour while you watch me do it, and we will see how long you live with your guts hanging out." She gave him a cold smile and shrugged. "I was once told by a soldier who worked for my father that he had seen the Orlesians do it to one of his fellows when they had been captured. The man lived four days. He said the man screamed in agony before he died. Apparently it is a very painful way to linger before you go to the Maker. He said the smell was unspeakable, and the flies and maggots were a sight to be seen." She smiled again. "Would you like to see that sight yourself?" She asked in mock sweetness. The man's red and watering eyes got wide as he shook his head so hard that she thought he would knock the chair over.
"No, puh-please, don't. We were following orders." Kai's hand shot out, and her fist caught him on the jaw knocking the chair over. Sten calmly pulled the man and the chair back upright.
"I don't think that was the right answer, my friend." Zev's smile was cold, and he used his assassin's voice. Kai chuckled low in her throat.
"If you answer my questions truthfully, then I promise you what you don't deserve. A quick and clean death, a warrior's death." Kai snapped her wrist and her dagger went sailing past the man's face, so close it cut his cheek, to land in the wall behind him. She cut another lemon and dipped it in salt. "But know how much I long for you to die slowly." She put the lemon and salt on the new cut now dripping blood from his chin.
What had seemed like hours only took minutes. The man confessed that the younger women and the children had been taken to a secret dock in a cove between the river that fed Lake Calenhad and the River Dane. It was a little known area, secluded and protected by the low cliff walls surrounding it leading out to the Waking Sea. The good news was that they were alive. The bad news, they had left two days ago to be taken to the cove to a Tevinter slaver ship that was waiting there. Anora was yet again selling her own people for money. Kai untied the man and shoved him out the door of the hut. She pushed him down in front of the others who were waiting. Kai noticed Wynne looked at the man, and the subtle look of relief that he had not been brutally tortured. She nodded at the mage, who nodded back. Then Kai did as she had promised. She put her dagger to the man's neck. She whispered in his ear, "I don't break my promises. But the Fade for you, it will be a nightmare from which you can never wake. Enjoy eternity." And slipped the blade between the vertebrae severing his spine letting his body fall and twitch on the ground.
She turned and grabbed a barrel of the oil that the soldiers had been using to douse the bodies on the pile. She took out the cork and poured it around the entrance to the tower. Then she uncorked another barrel and threw it in. When the others realized what she was doing, they helped until all the barrels were opened and tossed in. Then she grabbed the cask of whiskey sitting there and stuck her dagger in it making it leak. She walked a line of whiskey to the tower, splashed some inside and put the cask down. She took a lit torch and touched it to the whiskey on the ground, watching the flame dance along the line she had made. When it got to the tower interior, the flames found the cask and the oil. She stood only long enough to make sure the flames took hold, then she gathered them all to ride as hard as they could back the way they had come. She only hoped that this time she would not be too late.