Dragon Age: Last Flight (11 page)

“So, twenty aravels?” she said. “Better get to hammering.”

*   *   *

As it happened, Garahel was abysmal at hammering. The care and patience demanded by good carpentry work was entirely anathema to the elven archer. If he couldn’t shoot it, woo it, or tell it lewd stories, Amadis groused, Garahel had no interest in a thing at all.

Not that the Marcher woman was much better. But, as Amadis was quick to point out,
she
knew her limitations and stayed out of the townspeople’s way. Instead she spent her time writing letters to various friends and relatives in the nobility of the Free Marches, other mercenary captains of her acquaintance, and anyone else she thought might be of use in the war effort. Often she asked Garahel to deliver those letters on griffon-back, a task that routinely kept him out of Wycome from dawn until dusk.

Finally, after one morning when Amadis had given her brother a satchel full of letters and a detailed list of names, Isseya had to ask her: “Doesn’t the Warden-Commander get annoyed that you’re using Garahel as a messenger boy?”

“Of course not,” Amadis replied, her dark eyes widening in surprise. She tossed her sleek black hair with a laugh. “What better use could there be for him? He’s got no gift for magic and he’s hopeless with a saw, you’ve seen it yourself. Ask him to help build aravels, and he’d find a way to sink those fishing boats on land.

“But what he
can
do is ride that funny-looking griffon to the far corners of Thedas at extraordinary speed. And there he can use his gifts of charm to win lords and ladies and hardened killers to our cause. Do you have any
idea
what kind of prestige those people attach to a personal message signed by the princess-captain of the Ruby Drakes and delivered by a Grey Warden on a griffon? That’s a tale for their grandchildren, if they live long enough to have any. It’s something to tell their friends and awe their underlings. For the ones who aren’t prone to awe, it’s a pointed reminder of the force we can exert at will. Either way, it makes it very, very difficult for them to say no.”

“So it’s politics,” Isseya said distastefully, looking around. That explained why Amadis had been given a private room with her own desk, a sheaf of paper, and the rare luxury of writing quills when all Wycome’s goose feathers were being requisitioned for arrows. She had thought it odd for the resolutely practical Senaste to show such consideration for a guest, no matter how closely connected to Starkhaven’s ruling family … but this put a more pragmatic gloss on the Warden-Commander’s actions.

“It’s politics,” Amadis agreed with a companionable grin, “and you’d better get used to playing the game. War is just politics with swords, and we aim to win.”

“I’m better at magic,” Isseya muttered, leaving the human woman to her letters.

Those letters worked, though. Every day, Garahel brought back more promises of support and pledges of aid. Prince Vael sent word that the refugees from Wycome would find safety in Starkhaven, and although Amadis cautioned them to take her cousin’s promises lightly, it still felt like a victory.

Or, at least, it felt like it
could
be a victory, if only they could get those people to the city in time.

Their days were running out. Even with every able-bodied man and woman working day and night to build aravels from fishing boats and wagon wheels—or donkey carts and sleigh runners, or whatever else they could find—they weren’t likely to have more than thirty done before the Blight took them. Isseya found herself hoping that she’d still be leading the first group out of Wycome when the darkspawn struck, just so she wouldn’t have to watch the town fall.

But the townspeople worked as if possessed, and a week after Isseya first proposed the idea during their inebriated meeting at the Glass Apple, they had enough makeshift aravels for the first transport run out of Wycome.

Eighteen vehicles were harnessed in a double line. They’d finished only nineteen in time, and one had broken during stress testing when Isseya slammed it down on the sheep pasture to simulate a bumpy landing.

Almost two hundred and fifty townspeople had crowded into those vessels, which seemed absurdly fragile to carry them across the Free Marches at speed. Food, clothing, and precious heirlooms mounded the thin wooden shells between wide-eyed children and their parents, who put on brave faces and hugged them close. Lacking much space for storage, most people had chosen to wear their best clothes to save them, and their festival finery gave the affair a grotesque air. Disgruntled chickens and geese protested in wicker cages strapped over the boats’ sides. Their constant squawks and screeches, and occasional bursts of feathers, added to the surreal atmosphere.

Crookytail and Revas stood at the head of the procession, each linked to a chain of nine aravels. Warden-Commander Senaste had procured new harnesses for the griffons, and the bright silver medallions strung on the padded leather straps gleamed like jewels in the misty morning light. It seemed impossible that the griffons, however powerful, could lift such a tremendous burden into the air—and it
was
impossible, without magic.

Maybe even with,
Isseya thought, before she pushed those unwanted doubts firmly aside. She tied the sleeves of her robe around her wrists and elbows, adjusted the wide band that held her hair firmly in place, and glanced across the way to the Warden at the head of the other line. Garahel sat alongside the man, murmuring reassurances to his griffon. He’d control Crookytail, but it was the mage who would keep their aravels aloft.

Isseya didn’t have anyone else guiding Revas. She would do everything on her own, because taking both tasks onto herself meant that there was room for one more passenger.

She took a deep breath, then called over to the other lead aravel: “Ready?”

“Ready!” Garahel called back. He sounded much more cheerful than Isseya felt.

“Ready,” the other mage echoed solemnly.

Isseya wrapped Revas’s reins around her left wrist and tightened both hands around the smooth solidity of her staff. She opened herself to the Fade and felt its ethereal energy fill her, flowing through the conduit of her staff. The whispers of spirits and demons teased at the fringes of her thoughts, echoing the thrum of the magic through her soul.

She pushed those whispers away and gathered the magic. As she’d practiced so many times in the days before, Isseya shaped it into a soft, broad-based cone. It was a pillowy formation, dissipating into a cloudlike cushion at the bottom. That amorphous, flattened base was wide enough to support the entire column and also diffused the spell’s force, preventing it from breaking the aravels apart. Once she had it steady, it was bearable, although taxing, to sustain the circling waves of force that coursed through the spell.

Gently, she called to Revas:
“Lift.”
As the griffon spread her black wings and pushed upward, trusting in Isseya to make it possible for her to lift the impossible burden instead of breaking herself against it, the elf thrust her force cone at the earth.

The aravels lurched up behind the griffon, crawling into empty air like an enormous caterpillar of wood, rope, and metal. A rush of gasps and cries came from behind Isseya, echoed a second later as Crookytail took to the air alongside them and brought up the second line.

The ropes and chains that bound the aravels together creaked alarmingly, but with the mages’ spells buoying them, they held together. Twenty feet above the ground, they steadied. And with no weight burdening them, the griffons pulled smoothly forward in harness, each one trailing a long line of floating fishing boats and exhilarated, terrified riders.

Neither of the griffons was accustomed to flying so low. Neither was Isseya, for that matter. Revas’s ears were flattened against her skull, and the flare in her nostrils showed the griffon’s unease at so nearly brushing the treetops. Isseya
wanted
to give her free rein to fly higher, where she’d feel more comfortable. But she couldn’t, because the force cone that held the aravels aloft could reach no higher. If they ascended, the magic would falter, and they’d all come crashing down.

“Trust me,” she implored the griffon.

It was hard to tell whether Revas heard her. One tufted black ear twitched, but that could have been the wind. Nonetheless, the griffon flew straight and level, veering around the taller trees instead of attempting to pull the aravels over them.

And then they were skimming across the Free Marches, flashing over rocky outcroppings and scrubby trees and patches of meadow that had begun to grow wild after the sheep and cows that once grazed them had been slaughtered in preparation for the siege. Creeks and streams flicked by in twinkling silver, gone almost before Isseya saw them.

She knew Revas wasn’t flying as swiftly as she could. If anything, the griffon was pacing herself for a long journey. But, when they flew so low to the ground, the landscape seemed to race by far more quickly than usual.

In half an hour, Wycome was nowhere to be seen behind them. The tributaries of the Minanter River flowed around them, dimpling under the pressure of Isseya’s force cone when the caravan crossed their waters. Maintaining the spell over water was treacherous—the river roiled and eddied unpredictably under them, making it hard to hold the aravels steady—so the elf guided her griffon quickly across the tributaries and then kept Revas flying along the shore.

To the north, where Antiva City had been and might, somewhere, still exist, the black cloud-cloak of the Blight was a smudge of dirty smoke on the horizon. Mostly, mercifully, the trees obscured it from view. But occasionally the trees thinned, and then Isseya would catch a glimpse of a sky purpled with clouds that swelled like boils on the verge of bursting, and of soundless lightning that stabbed from cloud to cloud in an electric manifestation of agony.

Never any break of daylight, never any rain. Only the looming shadow of the storm on the horizon.

It was seldom visible, though, and they never saw anything of Ansburg, although Isseya knew that city lay not far from their route to the north. At twenty feet above the ground, most of what they saw was trees and hills. They passed empty farmhouses where skinny dogs lifted their heads and howled hopefully at the aravels, and they passed occupied ones where the inhabitants peered at them suspiciously through wood-shuttered windows.

The sun arced steadily upward from morning to noon, and then began to slide inexorably toward nightfall. Twice the aravels stopped, allowing a brief respite for the griffons and the mages, and enabling their passengers to eat and relieve themselves and stretch their cramped legs. The terror and urgency of their journey was such, however, that few people wanted to do any of those things, and most of them were visibly relieved when their travels resumed. They all wanted to be safe behind the walls of Starkhaven.

And in the red glow of sunset, those walls finally came into view.

They were imposing: a curved mountain of earth crowned with concentric rings of tall gray stone, gilded by the setting sun. On the northern side, the Minanter River rushed through the city’s water gate, creating a constant low roar like the sound of the sea. The city itself, glimpsed only as a glory of marble palaces set on green hills and ringed by broad boulevards, receded behind the height of its walls as the caravan approached.

Pennons snapped from the towers on those walls, depicting three black fishes encircling a snowy chalice on a field of red. At least, Isseya
thought
they were fishes. It wasn’t easy to tell, with all the spikes and curlicues. Whatever they were, they were being vigilantly defended by ranks of soldiers in red surcoats and steel chainmail.

One of the soldiers, who appeared to be an officer by the plate mail under his surcoat and the rope of gold braid around his chest, raised a gauntleted forearm to hail the Grey Wardens as they came within reach of his shouts. “Wardens! Be welcome to Starkhaven!”

“Thank you!” Garahel shouted back, mustering a cheerful tone even though he was as exhausted as the rest. The elven Warden guided Crookytail back to the ground, while Isseya and the other mage lowered the aravels gently behind the descending griffons. It took them a cautious five minutes to land; now that they knew the floating aravels could work, it was crucial to keep every one of them intact.

But the aravels landed smoothly, settling onto the Minanter’s riverbanks with a series of wooden creaks and squawks from the caged fowl on their sides. The refugees of Wycome began to disembark, looking around uncertainly.

Even as they struggled to find their bearings after their long travels through the air, the gates of Starkhaven swung open. People poured out, holding offerings of food and water and wine. “Hail the heroes of Wycome!” one man shouted, and soon the crowd took up the cry. “The Wardens! The Grey Wardens! Hail the heroes of Wycome!”

“Wonder how long that’ll last,” Isseya muttered under her breath. Starkhaven might be thrilled to have a victory over the darkspawn now—even such a limited victory as saving some of Wycome from the horde—but she wondered how long their enthusiasm would hold up when they realized they’d have hundreds more refugees to fit into an already strained city.

She wasn’t the only one to wonder such things.

“Will they find places for us all, truly?” an older, moonfaced woman asked Isseya in a querulous tremble. A gaudy silk scarf, painted with brilliant azure peacocks and scarlet roses, covered her round shoulders. It was probably the finest thing she owned, and it stood in sharp contrast to the homespun plainness of her dress. The wrinkles at the corners of her mouth trembled as she looked up at the guards. “No one wants extra mouths in a siege.”

“They do want extra soldiers in a war,” the elf replied. It was the only honest hope she could offer. Helping hands were always welcome in hard times.

The woman clutched at the carved wooden brooch that held the ends of her scarf pinned over her bosom. “I’m a grandmother, not a soldier. I can’t fight.”

“This is a Blight,” Isseya said. A flinty edge crept into her voice; she heard it, and she saw the round woman flinch in response, but she didn’t stop herself. She was too tired for that. “You can fight, and you will. You made that choice when you stepped into the aravel. We won’t be able to get everyone out of Wycome. We don’t have enough boats, or enough griffons, or enough mages to save them all. Someone else will die because you took their place. So you
will
fight, or I’ll gut you myself for wasting my effort and a spot that could have gone to someone with some courage.”