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The clash of shield against shield rings out over the rush of rain; his head swivels toward the sound. The long scrape of metal, blade against blade.
“Maker take you!”
Another crash, another cry—but not a battle cry; the sound carries no triumph at all.
#
Things were not going well.
That, of course, was an understatement of astronomical proportions. They’d taken the lower level of Caer Bronach, and they’d taken it with little difficulty at all. Bandits, after all, were not demons, were not Venatori, were not rogue mages or red lyrium-powered super-templars; they were men.
They were only men.
Maybe that had been Oliver’s first mistake: underestimating them.
#
Bodies of fallen adversaries lay sprawled around Cassandra, but for one still standing and throwing his own scarred shield hard against hers. Over and over again, he uses her exhaustion against her. So many bodies, so many slain men, all dead by her blade. All but one.
Sometimes it only ever takes one.
Too far away, the angle all wrong, Oliver sends out arrows. Two at a time. Three at a time. But all slam uselessly into the shield, sharp tips leaving tiny pockmarks in their wake.
Cassandra’s flagging. He can tell, can see it in the way she’s shifted her weight, in the way she’s holding her sword a little lower, her shield a little higher—defensive, not offensive. He runs, leaping over barrels, over ruined skeletons of crates and chests. Flank him flank him flank him, he tells himself. He fires arrows even as he runs, on the hope the shield will lower and the Maker will see fit to send him a single stroke of luck. Oliver hasn’t had the most extraordinary streak of good luck as of late, but there’s a chance, there’s always a chance.
Another crash, shields clanging. Cassandra’s head is bowed, her shield wavering as muscles protest and tremble.
#
The second level of the keep was rain-slicked, water pooling where it hadn’t drained properly—no surprise there that bandits weren’t terribly keen on things like maintenance and upkeep—and rain kept pouring down from leaden skies. The issue wasn’t that he was soaked through; they all were. But droplets kept sliding into his eyes, clinging to his lashes and sending the world around him into a grey-toned blur. Still he pulled arrows from his quiver, still he shot them into streaming rain, nearly lost until a gout of fire from Dorian’s staff cast everything into orange-yellow light as it ate through raindrops and turned them to steam, which Oliver dearly hoped hindered the bandits’ visibility as much as it did his own.
From the corner of his eye, the large grey blur he knew to be Bull shifted out of sight. Oliver turned his head to find the bandits drawing the qunari away from the fray and he swore silently, viciously. Oldest trick in the book: divide and conquer.
Over my dead body, he thinks.
#
The bandit is pushing, shoving, backing Cassandra into a corner, using his shield aggressively; she can’t find an opening to raise her blade.
Arrows fly from Oliver’s fingers, plinking, pinging against the shield, against armor, flying wide and careening against stone. Nothing’s working, nothing’s right. He’d settle for a distraction—Come after me, you son of a bitch—but he knows brawls like these: take out the warrior, and the rest will fold and fall. Arrows, one after the other after the other fly from his bow, one, two, three at a time.
Yet another crash; this one, though, is sadder, discordant. Wrong.
Her sword drops; Cassandra does not so much fall as fold in on herself, collapsing like a puppet whose strings have been sliced.
The world tilts and turns as Oliver runs, stomach lurching back against his spine in panic, boots splashing through ankle-deep water.
His hoarse shout is the only thing that drowns out the roar of rain. “Cassandra!”
#
“Dorian!” he shouted hoarsely over the rush of rain pounding against stone. “Go! Cover Bull!”
That the mage splashed off with only a nod and not a single smart remark told Oliver, more than anything else, they were in trouble.
Taking a breath and swiping his forearm across his eyes, he turned, eyes scanning the battlements as he reached up and back, fingers plucking an arrow, pulling it forward, nocking it, following the sounds of swords scraping and shields crashing, searching for the familiar flash of Cassandra’s armor. Visibility was exactly nothing to write home about—
There.
As Bull had been pulled to one side, so was Cassandra to the other.
Divide and conquer.
Not today, he vows. Not today.
#
Blood swirls, dark red clouds spread through filthy water. His bow isn’t in his hands any longer, but a dagger instead, and Maker’s breath the grip feels foreign in his hand, but he can’t shoot around that blasted shield, and Cassandra is down, she’s down and he can’t—he can’t—
Oliver’s always had a knack for not being noticed, for blending into shadow, but gifts cultivated by naughty children seldom evolve so. Fast and silent, movements lost to the gloom and drowned out by the storm, he thrusts the dagger once, viciously, through the bandit’s throat, finally, finally hitting the spot that had proved so elusive to his arrows. He pushes the weapon through and gives it a brutal twist before shoving the man back, letting him slide off the blade, falling with a sputter and a splash to the stones.
Shouts from across the battlements tell Oliver Dorian and Bull were victorious: Caer Bronach is clear. But he barely acknowledges them, sheathing the dagger as he drops to a crouch, pulling Cassandra from where she lay, staining the water with her blood—and there is plenty of it, streaming from her nose, from a cut at her lip, one above her eye, blood oozing from other wounds he cannot see but that stains her armor and leathers nonetheless.
“Don’t you dare,” he grits out, pulling her up, slinging an arm about his shoulders and half carrying, half dragging her to a storeroom that is nearby and comparatively dry. “Don’t you bloody well dare, Seeker.”
But Cassandra doesn’t reply.
Oliver’s gut turns to ice as his fingers prod the side of her neck—a pulse flutters there; she is not dead, not dead—while his free hand fumbles at his belt for a restorative and he makes a hundred thousand silent oaths—to himself, to Cassandra, to the Maker—pulling the cork free with his teeth and spitting it aside. His hand shakes as he brings the vial to her mouth, errant droplets splashing on her lips before he tips the tiny bottle past those lips, emptying it and massaging her throat until her slack face tightens into an expression that could very well be disgust.
Her low groan is the most welcome sound he’s heard in weeks.
“That tastes… terrible,” she mutters. There’s blood on her teeth.
“Yes, well,” he says, giving in to the relieved shudder of laughter that shakes his voice, moving back as Cassandra sits up, grimacing and rubbing her head. “Don’t let people crash their shields into your skull next time.”
The look Cassandra sends him is a dark one, and Oliver wouldn’t have it any other way. “I didn’t let anyone do anything.”
“Even so, let this be a lesson to you.” He’s forcing the lightness in his tone; he can hear how false it is, but cannot seem to make himself care about verisimilitude just then. “Being rendered unconscious during battle earns one foul-tasting potions as a reward.”
“I do not plan on allowing such a thing to happen again.”
Neither do I.