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“This smells like a setup,” Skinner says, actually sniffing the air and then wrinkling her nose.
Krem agrees. It had been too easy, fight their way up the bluff – not nearly enough Venatori for an operation this important. So either the Qunari were playing it too safe, and isn’t that a joke, or there’s some other factor that no one told the Chargers, which means no one told the Bull, either.
“It has since the initial offer,” Dorian replies, all tension.
Strictly speaking, Dorian isn’t supposed to be here. He’s not a Charger, for all they joke that if he spent much more time drinking with them he’d have to start making himself useful, and he hadn’t been invited along with the Inquisitor. But he hasn’t been forbidden to come along, and with Dalish down with the flu, they need that extra firepower, so to speak.
A few of Skinner’s Throatcutters have been hunting down kindling, while Grim sits on the small pile of wood he chopped. Being a newcomer, Dorian didn’t know better than to offer help lighting the fire, and the lecture Rocky’s delivering him has Stitches cackling almost as bad as Dalish would’ve. But no one relaxes, even when the flare goes up.
Through Krem’s spyglass he can see the chief, though not in detail, swinging his weapon around without much eye for style. Fair enough; he’s only got the one. Means they’re undermatched at least, but they could have someone set off their flare while cleaning up the stragglers.
“Chief and the Inquisitor have their side mostly cleared,” Krem calls over the thirty-seven mostly uninjured Chargers who had made the trip, and Dorian, the contractor. “Fight’s not over yet though. Stay sharp, lads.”
Stitches coughs, possibly pointedly, so Krem grins his way. “Right, my mistake. Lads and doctors.”
Turning back around, Krem just catches the other flare go off, and one small worry uncoils into nothing from the tangled jumble of the rest. From beside him, Dorian breathes a sigh of relief. That’s what sold them all on Dorian Of House Pavus, Most Recently Of Minrathous in the end; he worries just as much about the chief as any Charger, and doesn’t take his shit besides.
At the moment he’s not looking at the Bull, though, and stares down to the beach instead. “I’ve had little opportunity to formally study tactics, but…”
The beach is empty. It really shouldn’t be.
“We have the advantage up here.” Krem nods when Dorian looks up with narrowed eyes. It’s Krem’s turn to assess the beach, sweep across it with the spyglass. “So why’d they let us take it?”
Skinner swears forcefully in Orlesian and then lunges over to grab the spyglass from Krem’s hands. The rest of them turn to the direction she’s watching, and after a moment of squinting Krem catches the telltale sweep of huge sails. Dorian, just in front of him now, sighs again and shakes his head. “I’m hardly their biggest fan,” he murmurs, “but I really must admire their structural competency.”
Stitches looks back to grin at them. “That what they’re calling it these days?”
“A multipurpose phrase,” Dorian replies, probably glaring back. It’s a far cry from the early stages of his thing with the chief, where he’d flinch away from even the most ridiculous insinuations, but Dorian still hasn’t got the hang of no one actually gives a shit.
The dreadnought rolls in through the mist, and there could be no mistaking its size now. And this to the Qun, apparently, was a small ship. If the cove were even a little protected by rock, it wouldn’t have been able to in so close – and that’s weird too, how these Venatori smugglers chose such a shit hideout. They’re playing the Qunari, have to be, but how did the Qunari fall for it.
“I still don’t like this.” Skinner turns up at Krem’s elbow, spyglass in hand. “Why didn’t they just come in and blow the whole thing up?”
Krem snorts and secures it back in the pouch. “Would’ve saved us the trouble.”
A sharp breath in – that’s Dorian, his eyes going wide just long enough to give himself away. He runs a hand over the wreck that used to be his hairdo, and frowns down to the beach before looking back to Krem and Skinner. “Vishante kaffas, it’s a test,” he spits. “The Qunari know something we don’t, and they’re waiting to see how Bull responds.”
“Fuck,” says Krem, “we’ve all been played.”
Three small explosions ring out, followed by three much bigger crashes, and now Krem can see the smugglers’ ship, burning angry yellow. A cheer breaks out, but the veterans stay tense, and Dorian’s frowning harder, watching the sinking boat. “Krem.” His voice is steady, all seriousness, and that’s the indication that what he’s about to say is actually worth listening to. “There’s no red lyrium on that boat.”
“Could be they haven’t loaded it yet,” Stitches suggests, but not with any confidence. Could be the Qunari just happened to offer an alliance right before they started questioning the chief’s loyalty. Could be Corypheus trips over his own rotted dress and breaks his skull open.
The first blast of lightning roars past where Krem’s head would’ve been if he’d dropped any slower. “Right, boys,” he yells, loud as he can, “job’s gone officially tits-up!”
Shields in front, like the chief always told ‘em. Angled down, knock the spell away. Archers low to the ground, thinning out the shock troops before they can climb up too far. Dorian might not have any experience fighting with them, but his barriers make a fair trade-off, blocking the worst of the spells and sending arrows skidding away.
The situation doesn’t get any better. One well-timed blast flattens three shields, and their bearers don’t get up. No time to check their pulses. Krem runs forward to hold to line and takes a chunk of ice just under the ribs that punches the air from his chest. It staggers him – and then the smell of smoke and brine and pretty much everything else cuts out, the air around him shimmering. Funny. Krem’s never been inside a barrier before.
He chances a look as he falls back from the deteriorating shield formation, and Dorian’s pale and sweating, fumbling for a potion with one hand. For a second the barriers on the edges of the front line founder. Dorian strengthens them barely too late, but they all hear the choked-off cry from Gutter right after the thunk of arrow hitting meat.
“Right,” says Dorian, brushing the sweat out of his eyes, “okay, this is entirely untenable. We die, and then the horde masses on Bull and Adaar, and Maker knows what happens to them then. We need to fall back if we’re intending to—” He bends to duck a spell, and Krem takes the opportunity to grab his shoulder and hold him there.
“You agreed to act like a Charger,” Krem hisses, all the harsher because Dorian knows what he’s talking about here, might even be right. No. The chief will come back for them. Serious stuff like this, you don’t talk back when he gives an order, because he will always fucking come back for them. “Chief says hold the line, we hold the line until he says different. Horns. Pointed. Up.”
Dorian glares daggers, opens his mouth – and then shuts it tight. It’s the wrong time for Krem to give a shit, but he’s a bleeding heart apparently, and that look of resignation on Dorian’s face could belong to any foot soldier with fatal orders to follow. Dorian shores up the barriers he cast, but he looks up to the other flare, just the once.
“I suppose,” Dorian says, too soft, and Krem should’ve stopped listening already– “I suppose that if I am to die this abominably young, it may as well be for him.”
Well, fuck, thinks Krem, because the chief should’ve been the one to hear that, and now who knows—
And then the chief sounds the retreat.
The horn echoes across the beach and off the mountains behind them, like the end of something far bigger than the battle. The Chargers with any fallen who might possibly still be alive only make it to the treeline before the Venatori turn on the dreadnought instead, and Stitches can’t even get out a full “Sweet Maker’s mercy!” before the whole thing explodes.