Well, that took care of that.
It was an unearthly scene, with Vito's magelights still hovering in the trees, creating a disorienting mix of bright light and deep shadow, no longer punctuated by glowing orange and red from the flaming cart that had now been put out. The sounds of battle had been replaced with the sounds of the aftermath. Screams of injury were replaced by groans of those now steadily dying, unless Vito could do something about it, though he needed to tend to himself first. A few looked to have gone already. Cor was injured, Lia noted, and Evie even worse. Still alive, though, and that counted for something given what they'd come up against.
Lia had escaped with just the slice to her right arm, which stung as it bled, but in total was only a minor annoyance. She slung her bow over her shoulder, drawing Parshaara instead in case any of the dead attackers were not so dead after all. They seemed to have fled entirely, though, disappearing into the woods. The group was in no condition to pursue, but even if they were Lia would be against it. They weren't being paid to do that, and when working for someone like these Duret siblings, that was really all that mattered.
"Nobody's dying, right?" she asked, making her way towards the head of the caravan, where Cor had gotten himself caught up in that fight.
"Not any faster than usual." Vito answered first. The fight had bunched up, at the end, and he wasn't too far away. Within earshot, clearly. There was a gash on his temple that would probably be a livid bruise the next day, but of greater concern was the arrow buried in the meat of his thigh. Swilling from a potion flask, he gripped as close to the head as he could with steady fingers and clenched his jaw, tugging it out with a decisive pull, a grunt and heavy, forced-slow breath following before he put a purple limned hand over it. "Spina, can you tell me how quickly he's bleeding?" From context, he could only be speaking to her, about Cor.
She wasn't sure what he'd just called her, but the tone didn't make her think it was anything rude, and she had more important things to worry about anyway. "He'll keep for the moment," she assured him. "I think that one could use you a little more to start." She pointed to where Evie was downed by some mix of her injuries and the weight of the fight, it looked like. She was quite visibly bleeding, too, but unlike Cor she'd have no difficulty receiving Vito's healing magic. Lia pulled a healing potion from a pouch on her belt and shook it at the mage briefly. "I'll give him this in the meantime."
She stepped over more than a few bodies on her way to the front of the caravan, and Cor. Black-garbed, lightly armed and armored. There were already troubling thoughts swirling in Lia's mind, looking at their physiques, their choice of weaponry. She pushed them aside for the moment as she came up on Cor, lightly touching her knuckles to his upper arm and offering him the potion. "Hey, drink this."
He sat on the edge of the lead cart, his helm and shield discarded behind him and sword nowhere to be seen, for the moment. He blinked a few times, shaking his head slightly—more to try and focus than in denial of anything, because he reached out and accepted the potion readily enough. Downing it, Cor made a face and exhaled heavily. "Thanks." He managed a brief grin, but he still didn't quite seem to be able to find her eyes right. Already the rate of his bleeding had slowed, though whether that was the potion, the hand he'd pressed there, or something else wasn't completely clear. There was still plenty smeared and drying on his armor, probably not all of it his own.
With a frown, Cor shifted his attention momentarily to the front of the cart, where his last three opponents lay. "I tried not to kill a few, but... I think—" He winced. "I think I misjudged the force."
She shifted her attention with him, adjusting her grip on her dagger and approaching the bodies. Two of the black-clad figures were definitely dead already, but this one in the wolf pelt cowl... Lia took a few cautious steps to her side, crouching down and carefully reaching out, knife at the ready. She removed the cowl and tugged away the black cloth mask underneath, finding the face of the enemy's leader to be a female elf. Cor had done a number on her, though, inflicting significant damage to the jaw that left the lower half of her face a bloody mess. Lia found a pulse, but it was a weak one.
"This one's alive, but... not for long, I don't think." She had other wounds, like the arrow Lia had shot into her, and if she had to guess, there was also some skull or neck damage. Hard to say if she'd even be in a state to speak if she woke. "Could see if Vito can save her, though I think some of our own need the healing more right now." It wouldn't do to let any of them die for the sake of an enemy.
Lia wasn't particularly surprised to find that the leader was an elf, but it still left her with a sinking feeling in her gut. She carefully unmasked the others and found the same: more elves. "Shit." She stood, sheathing Parshaara and pacing a few steps back and forth before she forced herself to stop, take a breath, and look at them again. "They're no Dalish, no vallaslin. Honestly, it might've been better if they were Dalish." At least for Val Royeaux. Instead it was just as Camille Duret had predicted. Some gang of aggressive elves bold enough to attack caravans of Chantry lyrium. News of this would bring nothing but trouble if it spread.
Vito stood from where he'd knelt next to Evie, handing her a potion as he went. "No one you recognize, though? Not that I expect you to know every elf in Val Royeaux, mind you, but as I understand it the Lions have a lot to do with many of the ones who can fight, yes?"
"We didn't teach them this, though. We were trying to help them defend themselves, not teach them how to become bandits." The company stirred up some ire as it was, teaching the locals some self defense techniques. If anyone had thought they were preparing the Alienage to execute guerrilla warfare, there'd have a lot more trouble to deal with.
Still, that was beside the point. "I don't recognize any of these three. I'll, uh... I'll check some of the others." Her thoughts were annoyingly flustered, already thinking ahead to what they should do about this.
"Their tactics were all wrong," Cor agreed, seeming to regain some equilibrium. Despite the persistence of his injuries, he pushed away from the cart, pausing to steady himself on his feet. It didn't take long to figure out that he was checking the faces too, just in case. "When these three came at me, the first two were almost..." He grimaced. "They were too reckless. Throwing themselves on my shield like that—it's not smart, but surprising for that. It was like they didn't care if I got them as long as it opened the way for her to stab me." And that kind of disregard was definitely not part any Lion-taught self-defense lesson.
He crouched, as if to see about helping the cloaked woman, but the attempt ended early, in a grimace. Gone, apparently. With a soft sigh, he turned her pockets out instead, looking for anything that might provide a clue as to who these people were. "No ashes," he murmured, then hmmed thoughtfully.
When he stood, there was something dangling from his fingers: a leather cord with a crude wooden pendant on the end of it. Nothing of value, clearly, but an odd thing to carry into a fight. Perhaps a personal trinket of some kind.
Vito sighed. "Hold still for a moment, Mattone." Picking his way to where Cor was, he wreathed both his hands in light green for a moment, passing them in the air over him and expelling another short breath. "This would be easier if you sat and removed the armor, but I'll just stop the bleeding for now." The light changed colors to something more blue. "So suppose this is in fact a gang of discontented city elves. Lyrium seems a strange choice for theft. There's a thriving black market for it, to be sure, but it's much more difficult to offload than mundane goods, and it's not useful to most people. Why not steal from merchant caravans? Less guarded, less likely to bring professional retribution, more lucrative."
Lia tore the mask from another of the fallen, finding another unfamiliar elven man's face staring blankly back up at her. "They're not after money, then. At least, not by stealing this lyrium. They must want it for something else." Lia wasn't an expert on the uses of lyrium, and she doubted anyone else here was, though Vito probably knew more than the rest of them. She did at least know that it was a versatile thing, used for far more than powering flagging mages and helping Chantry templars dredge up their powers. What a bunch of angry city elves would want with it was beyond her. The quantity too was an issue. There was no way their gang had enough mages in it to demand ambushing entire supply caravans of the stuff. "Any guesses?"
"Explosives?" Cor's tone was hard to read. "Angry people tend to like blowing things up—just ask Kirkwall." It would be extremely grim news if true.
"An alarming possibility." Vito lowered his arms and stepped back from Cor, apparently satisfied with his condition for the moment. "Enough of it, or in the right form, would be highly toxic. Poison is an option, though there are a number of plants that would be much easier to procure and kill someone just as dead, so to speak. This seems too dangerous to have been a mere distraction for something else; the number of things that would be worth this much risk is... limited."
Evie finally seemed to get a bit of air back in her lungs, at least enough to move around without any aid. She'd sheathed her shortsword and retrieved her estoc, now carrying it loosely with a hand. The other still didn't look like it was in the best of shape as she cradled it close to her chest, and her tunic had been more firmly tied around her wound.
She crouched near the last fighter she'd felled, and inspected her face, though even in the dim light Evie looked like she was a bit green in the face. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and turned away, instead going to look at them. "What else--" she paused for a moment, pressing her hand back to her mouth until the episode passed, "What else can lyrium be used for though?" she managed to ask. "I highly doubt they have any templars in their employ."
"Whatever they need it for, they aren't getting this shipment here, and now they've got actual losses to deal with." Lia had no idea how large of a group they were dealing with here. It was possible they'd just killed their leader here, and it was also possible that this was just the tip of the spear. Either way they'd been dealt a blow.
"Cor, a word? The rest of you should keep working on these bodies, and clear the lyrium from one of the carts." There was enough room in the others to divide up one so that they could take it back while the caravan carried on. Grim as it was, the bodies also needed to be taken back for possible identification and then proper disposal. She was willing to bet the gang would take care of them themselves if they left them here, but on the off chance a lead could be provided, they had to try.
When she and Cor had separated themselves from the others, she started working on binding the cut to her arm, keeping her voice low. "They aren't Ashfingers, but... I don't know what else they'd be."
He grimaced, clearly having thought something similar. "Slim chance that there are two well-trained groups of city elves with a penchant for disrupting the the powerful," he agreed, reaching up to scratch his cheek. He was biting the side of his tongue, she could tell, and clicked it softly against the roof of his mouth before continuing. "But we don't have enough evidence to confirm, and honestly I think it's better if we don't even mention the similarities to certain parties until we do." He had to be talking about the Durets.
"I can try finding Kestrel. No guarantee that'll work, but it might. She'd know one way or the other." His brows knit. "It doesn't quite seem like her style, but... neither did that vandalism, before the riot."
Lia had a much easier way of reaching Kestrel, but it wasn't one she wanted to take unless she had no other choice. Considering how anonymous the Ashfingers were supposed to be, she couldn't imagine Arrin approaching Kestrel and asking for an audience on Lia's behalf would go over well. But Cor was right: first the vandalism, and now this. Intentional or unintentional, the Ashfingers were going to have a much harder time staying hidden if this kept up.
"So do we lie to them?" she asked. "Try to pass this off as run-of-the-mill bandits getting way too aggressive? I don't know how long that'll hold up." The Revered Mother could just have her own people questioned, and while Lia had no love for her, Camille Duret and her brother weren't enemies she really wanted to make right now.
"Why lie?" he replied with a shrug. "These were bandits, with no detectable affiliation with any known group, and we can't say more with any certainty. That's the truth. They're going to draw their own conclusions no matter what we tell them—we might as well just give it to them straight, and keep the guessing out of it. Their people will be able to say exactly as much as we do, and we live up to our reputation of honesty. For now, it's a win-win."
She exhaled a long breath, and nodded. "All right." She cinched bandage around her arm, offering a somewhat guilty smile up at him. "It's times like these I'm glad you're the one that does the talking. I never did learn how to not piss people off."
He grinned back at her, more than a little sly. "The people who matter find it charming." With a gentle little shove to her uninjured side, he pulled in a deep breath. "Back to damage control we go."
It was an unearthly scene, with Vito's magelights still hovering in the trees, creating a disorienting mix of bright light and deep shadow, no longer punctuated by glowing orange and red from the flaming cart that had now been put out. The sounds of battle had been replaced with the sounds of the aftermath. Screams of injury were replaced by groans of those now steadily dying, unless Vito could do something about it, though he needed to tend to himself first. A few looked to have gone already. Cor was injured, Lia noted, and Evie even worse. Still alive, though, and that counted for something given what they'd come up against.
Lia had escaped with just the slice to her right arm, which stung as it bled, but in total was only a minor annoyance. She slung her bow over her shoulder, drawing Parshaara instead in case any of the dead attackers were not so dead after all. They seemed to have fled entirely, though, disappearing into the woods. The group was in no condition to pursue, but even if they were Lia would be against it. They weren't being paid to do that, and when working for someone like these Duret siblings, that was really all that mattered.
"Nobody's dying, right?" she asked, making her way towards the head of the caravan, where Cor had gotten himself caught up in that fight.
"Not any faster than usual." Vito answered first. The fight had bunched up, at the end, and he wasn't too far away. Within earshot, clearly. There was a gash on his temple that would probably be a livid bruise the next day, but of greater concern was the arrow buried in the meat of his thigh. Swilling from a potion flask, he gripped as close to the head as he could with steady fingers and clenched his jaw, tugging it out with a decisive pull, a grunt and heavy, forced-slow breath following before he put a purple limned hand over it. "Spina, can you tell me how quickly he's bleeding?" From context, he could only be speaking to her, about Cor.
She wasn't sure what he'd just called her, but the tone didn't make her think it was anything rude, and she had more important things to worry about anyway. "He'll keep for the moment," she assured him. "I think that one could use you a little more to start." She pointed to where Evie was downed by some mix of her injuries and the weight of the fight, it looked like. She was quite visibly bleeding, too, but unlike Cor she'd have no difficulty receiving Vito's healing magic. Lia pulled a healing potion from a pouch on her belt and shook it at the mage briefly. "I'll give him this in the meantime."
She stepped over more than a few bodies on her way to the front of the caravan, and Cor. Black-garbed, lightly armed and armored. There were already troubling thoughts swirling in Lia's mind, looking at their physiques, their choice of weaponry. She pushed them aside for the moment as she came up on Cor, lightly touching her knuckles to his upper arm and offering him the potion. "Hey, drink this."
He sat on the edge of the lead cart, his helm and shield discarded behind him and sword nowhere to be seen, for the moment. He blinked a few times, shaking his head slightly—more to try and focus than in denial of anything, because he reached out and accepted the potion readily enough. Downing it, Cor made a face and exhaled heavily. "Thanks." He managed a brief grin, but he still didn't quite seem to be able to find her eyes right. Already the rate of his bleeding had slowed, though whether that was the potion, the hand he'd pressed there, or something else wasn't completely clear. There was still plenty smeared and drying on his armor, probably not all of it his own.
With a frown, Cor shifted his attention momentarily to the front of the cart, where his last three opponents lay. "I tried not to kill a few, but... I think—" He winced. "I think I misjudged the force."
She shifted her attention with him, adjusting her grip on her dagger and approaching the bodies. Two of the black-clad figures were definitely dead already, but this one in the wolf pelt cowl... Lia took a few cautious steps to her side, crouching down and carefully reaching out, knife at the ready. She removed the cowl and tugged away the black cloth mask underneath, finding the face of the enemy's leader to be a female elf. Cor had done a number on her, though, inflicting significant damage to the jaw that left the lower half of her face a bloody mess. Lia found a pulse, but it was a weak one.
"This one's alive, but... not for long, I don't think." She had other wounds, like the arrow Lia had shot into her, and if she had to guess, there was also some skull or neck damage. Hard to say if she'd even be in a state to speak if she woke. "Could see if Vito can save her, though I think some of our own need the healing more right now." It wouldn't do to let any of them die for the sake of an enemy.
Lia wasn't particularly surprised to find that the leader was an elf, but it still left her with a sinking feeling in her gut. She carefully unmasked the others and found the same: more elves. "Shit." She stood, sheathing Parshaara and pacing a few steps back and forth before she forced herself to stop, take a breath, and look at them again. "They're no Dalish, no vallaslin. Honestly, it might've been better if they were Dalish." At least for Val Royeaux. Instead it was just as Camille Duret had predicted. Some gang of aggressive elves bold enough to attack caravans of Chantry lyrium. News of this would bring nothing but trouble if it spread.
Vito stood from where he'd knelt next to Evie, handing her a potion as he went. "No one you recognize, though? Not that I expect you to know every elf in Val Royeaux, mind you, but as I understand it the Lions have a lot to do with many of the ones who can fight, yes?"
"We didn't teach them this, though. We were trying to help them defend themselves, not teach them how to become bandits." The company stirred up some ire as it was, teaching the locals some self defense techniques. If anyone had thought they were preparing the Alienage to execute guerrilla warfare, there'd have a lot more trouble to deal with.
Still, that was beside the point. "I don't recognize any of these three. I'll, uh... I'll check some of the others." Her thoughts were annoyingly flustered, already thinking ahead to what they should do about this.
"Their tactics were all wrong," Cor agreed, seeming to regain some equilibrium. Despite the persistence of his injuries, he pushed away from the cart, pausing to steady himself on his feet. It didn't take long to figure out that he was checking the faces too, just in case. "When these three came at me, the first two were almost..." He grimaced. "They were too reckless. Throwing themselves on my shield like that—it's not smart, but surprising for that. It was like they didn't care if I got them as long as it opened the way for her to stab me." And that kind of disregard was definitely not part any Lion-taught self-defense lesson.
He crouched, as if to see about helping the cloaked woman, but the attempt ended early, in a grimace. Gone, apparently. With a soft sigh, he turned her pockets out instead, looking for anything that might provide a clue as to who these people were. "No ashes," he murmured, then hmmed thoughtfully.
When he stood, there was something dangling from his fingers: a leather cord with a crude wooden pendant on the end of it. Nothing of value, clearly, but an odd thing to carry into a fight. Perhaps a personal trinket of some kind.
Vito sighed. "Hold still for a moment, Mattone." Picking his way to where Cor was, he wreathed both his hands in light green for a moment, passing them in the air over him and expelling another short breath. "This would be easier if you sat and removed the armor, but I'll just stop the bleeding for now." The light changed colors to something more blue. "So suppose this is in fact a gang of discontented city elves. Lyrium seems a strange choice for theft. There's a thriving black market for it, to be sure, but it's much more difficult to offload than mundane goods, and it's not useful to most people. Why not steal from merchant caravans? Less guarded, less likely to bring professional retribution, more lucrative."
Lia tore the mask from another of the fallen, finding another unfamiliar elven man's face staring blankly back up at her. "They're not after money, then. At least, not by stealing this lyrium. They must want it for something else." Lia wasn't an expert on the uses of lyrium, and she doubted anyone else here was, though Vito probably knew more than the rest of them. She did at least know that it was a versatile thing, used for far more than powering flagging mages and helping Chantry templars dredge up their powers. What a bunch of angry city elves would want with it was beyond her. The quantity too was an issue. There was no way their gang had enough mages in it to demand ambushing entire supply caravans of the stuff. "Any guesses?"
"Explosives?" Cor's tone was hard to read. "Angry people tend to like blowing things up—just ask Kirkwall." It would be extremely grim news if true.
"An alarming possibility." Vito lowered his arms and stepped back from Cor, apparently satisfied with his condition for the moment. "Enough of it, or in the right form, would be highly toxic. Poison is an option, though there are a number of plants that would be much easier to procure and kill someone just as dead, so to speak. This seems too dangerous to have been a mere distraction for something else; the number of things that would be worth this much risk is... limited."
Evie finally seemed to get a bit of air back in her lungs, at least enough to move around without any aid. She'd sheathed her shortsword and retrieved her estoc, now carrying it loosely with a hand. The other still didn't look like it was in the best of shape as she cradled it close to her chest, and her tunic had been more firmly tied around her wound.
She crouched near the last fighter she'd felled, and inspected her face, though even in the dim light Evie looked like she was a bit green in the face. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and turned away, instead going to look at them. "What else--" she paused for a moment, pressing her hand back to her mouth until the episode passed, "What else can lyrium be used for though?" she managed to ask. "I highly doubt they have any templars in their employ."
"Whatever they need it for, they aren't getting this shipment here, and now they've got actual losses to deal with." Lia had no idea how large of a group they were dealing with here. It was possible they'd just killed their leader here, and it was also possible that this was just the tip of the spear. Either way they'd been dealt a blow.
"Cor, a word? The rest of you should keep working on these bodies, and clear the lyrium from one of the carts." There was enough room in the others to divide up one so that they could take it back while the caravan carried on. Grim as it was, the bodies also needed to be taken back for possible identification and then proper disposal. She was willing to bet the gang would take care of them themselves if they left them here, but on the off chance a lead could be provided, they had to try.
When she and Cor had separated themselves from the others, she started working on binding the cut to her arm, keeping her voice low. "They aren't Ashfingers, but... I don't know what else they'd be."
He grimaced, clearly having thought something similar. "Slim chance that there are two well-trained groups of city elves with a penchant for disrupting the the powerful," he agreed, reaching up to scratch his cheek. He was biting the side of his tongue, she could tell, and clicked it softly against the roof of his mouth before continuing. "But we don't have enough evidence to confirm, and honestly I think it's better if we don't even mention the similarities to certain parties until we do." He had to be talking about the Durets.
"I can try finding Kestrel. No guarantee that'll work, but it might. She'd know one way or the other." His brows knit. "It doesn't quite seem like her style, but... neither did that vandalism, before the riot."
Lia had a much easier way of reaching Kestrel, but it wasn't one she wanted to take unless she had no other choice. Considering how anonymous the Ashfingers were supposed to be, she couldn't imagine Arrin approaching Kestrel and asking for an audience on Lia's behalf would go over well. But Cor was right: first the vandalism, and now this. Intentional or unintentional, the Ashfingers were going to have a much harder time staying hidden if this kept up.
"So do we lie to them?" she asked. "Try to pass this off as run-of-the-mill bandits getting way too aggressive? I don't know how long that'll hold up." The Revered Mother could just have her own people questioned, and while Lia had no love for her, Camille Duret and her brother weren't enemies she really wanted to make right now.
"Why lie?" he replied with a shrug. "These were bandits, with no detectable affiliation with any known group, and we can't say more with any certainty. That's the truth. They're going to draw their own conclusions no matter what we tell them—we might as well just give it to them straight, and keep the guessing out of it. Their people will be able to say exactly as much as we do, and we live up to our reputation of honesty. For now, it's a win-win."
She exhaled a long breath, and nodded. "All right." She cinched bandage around her arm, offering a somewhat guilty smile up at him. "It's times like these I'm glad you're the one that does the talking. I never did learn how to not piss people off."
He grinned back at her, more than a little sly. "The people who matter find it charming." With a gentle little shove to her uninjured side, he pulled in a deep breath. "Back to damage control we go."