Chapter 3: Defiance
The clangor of the alarm horn faded, swallowed by the stone-thick silence of the upper halls. Golden light from gilded sconces replaced the dungeon’s torch-smear, glinting off the blood on their hands. Conor wiped his rapier clean on a velvet curtain, its rich crimson fabric now stained a darker, more permanent shade.
“Here,” Soris whispered, his voice raw. He pointed to a pair of large, ornate doors at the end of the corridor, slightly ajar. Faint, muffled sobs seeped through the gap.
They crossed the distance in a breath. Conor kicked the door open.
The scene inside was a mockery of a celebration. A sitting room, all plush carpets and delicate furniture. Valora stood by a shattered vase, a shard still clutched in her shaking hand like a pathetic dagger. Nesiara was before her, arms outstretched protectively. Their wedding silks were torn, their hair disheveled, but their eyes held a fire that hadn’t been extinguished.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then Soris was across the room, his crossbow clattering to the floor. He pulled Valora into him, his big, calloused hands framing her face, his thumbs brushing away the tracks of tears, checking for wounds, his touch unbearably gentle. “You’re whole? You’re not hurt?” he murmured, over and over.
Conor’s approach was slower, his gaze locked on Nesiara. The fear in her eyes melted into a recognition that punched through the ice in his veins. He saw the red smear on her cheek. He closed the distance and cupped her face, his bloody fingers leaving stark prints on her pale skin. He searched her features, his mismatched eyes scanning for any sign of pain beneath the shock.
“Is this yours?” His voice was gravel.
She shook her head, leaning into his touch. “No. It’s… it’s from one of them. I bit him.” A ghost of her old spirit flickered there. “Shianni… she fought like a demon. They took her, and Relyn, to the east wing. Vaughan’s wing.”
Conor’s thumb stroked her cheek once, a promise and an apology. He turned.
Soris was helping Valora to her feet, his arm around her. He met Conor’s look and gave a single, grim nod. The women were safe, for now. But not all of them were.
They moved east, the castle’s opulence now a garish funhouse. The echoes of their own footsteps were the only sound. Then, laughter. Coarse, wheezing laughter, filtering from an open archway leading to a servant’s stairwell.
Two human guards in Kendells livery stood over a small, crumpled form in a once-white dress now dyed crimson. One poked the body with his boot.
“—fought like a wildcat, she did. Little knife she had. Got Jansen in the thigh ‘fore we put her down.”
“Ugly thing,” the other chuckled, taking a swig from a wineskin. “All skin and bone. Hardly worth the trouble.”
Conor didn’t process the words. He processed the dress. It was the simple linen of a bridesmaid, not Shianni’s deeper green. It was Relyn. Sweet, shy Relyn, who had woven flowers into Nesiara’s hair that morning.
There was no roar, no battle cry. The rage was a soundless, physical compression of the world. It was a vacuum where words should have been.
Soris acted first. His crossbow came up with a fluidity born of distilled fury. Twang-thud. The first guard’s laughter choked into a gurgle, the bolt buried in his eye socket. Before the body hit the floor, Soris had cranked the winch, reloaded, fired again. Twang-thud. The second man stared, wine dribbling from his open mouth, a new, feathered mouth blooming in the center of his throat.
Conor was already moving past the falling bodies.
The third guard, the one who had spoken last, fumbled for his sword. Conor parried the panicked upward slash with a casual turn of his rapier, the steel ringing once. The man overextended, swinging wildly. Conor backstepped, letting the blade whistle past his chest. He used the momentum of his retreat, spun full circle, and the spin became a throw. The long dagger left his hand like a silver bolt.
It buried itself to the hilt in the laughing man’s throat.
The guard dropped his sword, hands flying to the handle protruding from his neck. He made a wet, clicking sound.
Conor stepped in. He grabbed the dagger’s handle, yanked it sideways in a savage jerk. The rapier in his other hand followed the line of the slash, a horizontal flash. It met no resistance beyond a final, severing snick.
The guard’s head toppled from his shoulders. The body stood for a moment, then collapsed. Conor didn’t look at it. He looked at the head, impaled on the dagger still lodged in the neck stump. With a twist of his wrist, he flicked the severed head off the blade. It rolled wetly across the flagstones, coming to rest near Relyn’s outstretched hand.
He knelt. With a tenderness grotesque against the butchery, he closed her eyes with his bloody fingers.
Then he stood. He dropped the rapier and dagger onto the corpse.
He dropped the rapier and dagger onto the corpse. He didn’t need them anymore.
From the dead guard with the ruined throat, he took the man’s heavy heater shield. The weight was solid, comforting. He also pried the longsword from his stiffening fingers. The balance was crude, the edge notched from abuse, but it was a tool for a different kind of work. Soris, wordless, swapped his spent crossbow for a spiked mace from the second guard’s belt.
They found the door to Vaughan’s apartments at the end of the east hall. It was iron-bound oak, decorated with the snarling wolf’s head of House Kendells. Music and laughter, thin and cruel, leaked from beneath it.
Conor placed his shoulder against the cold wood and pushed. The door swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges.
The room was a cavern of obscene wealth. A fire roared in a massive hearth, throwing dancing light over tapestries and gilt furniture. Vaughan lounged in a high-backed chair by the fire, a crystal glass in his hand. Two other young nobles stood near him, their finery disheveled, faces flushed with drink and entitlement.
On the floor before the hearth, curled into herself like a wounded animal, was Shianni. Her green dress was torn at the shoulder. One eye was swollen shut, a vicious cut splitting her eyebrow. She held her arm tight against her side at a wrong angle.
Vaughan looked up as they entered. His smug expression froze, then melted into slack-jawed disbelief. He saw the blood, the new weapons, the hollow-eyed certainty in their faces.
“What in the Maker’s name…” one of the other nobles stammered, taking a step back.
“You idiots,” Vaughan spat, finding his voice. It was a sneer, but it wavered at the edges. “Look at them. They’re painted in it. That’s Denerim guard blood, you realize that? Yours, probably.”
He gestured with his glass at his two companions. “Every guard in this wing has tried and failed. And you think your soft hands will do better? Put your steel away before you piss yourselves.”
Conor didn’t speak. He adjusted his grip on the longsword. Soris shifted his weight, the mace hanging loose at his side.
Vaughan’s eyes darted between them, the reality of the silence dawning. He tried a new angle, a slippery smile forming. “Listen. There’s no need for this to get… uncivilized.” He fumbled at his belt, producing a ring of heavy iron keys. “The treasury vault. It’s yours until dawn. Gold, silks, whatever you can carry. Just… take it and go. The women too. A business transaction.”
Conor’s knuckles tightened around the sword’s leather-bound grip. The shield’s weight settled more firmly on his arm. Soris let out a slow, controlled breath, the only sound in the room.
The noble on the left, the one who had spoken, misread their stillness for hesitation. He drew his slender courtier’s blade with a shaky hiss. “I say we kill these rabb—”
Twang.
Soris’s bolt took him center mass. The impact was a wet, punctuating thump. The man looked down at the shaft protruding from his chest, confused, then crumpled forward onto a low table, scattering bottles.
The movement broke the room’s frozen tableau. The second noble shrieked and lunged at Conor, his sword a silver blur. Conor met the thrust not with a parry, but by simply angling the heavy shield. The blade screeched off the metal rim, sparking.
The force of the missed lunge threw the noble off balance. Conor stepped into him, leading with the shield’s edge. It caught Vaughan’s friend in the chest, cracking ribs and knocking the wind from him in a pained whoosh. As he staggered, Soris was there. The mace came down on his extended sword-arm with a sound like a green branch snapping. The man screamed, his arm bending the wrong way.
Before the scream could fade, Conor drove the boss of his shield upward into the man’s face. Cartilage gave way with a sickening crunch. Soris followed through, the mace swinging sideways to connect with a wet crack against the man’s cheekbone. He was already falling when Conor’s longsword, held in a two-handed grip, punched forward, driving through his heart and out his back.
Conor pulled the blade free. The body dropped.
Vaughan had scrambled backward during the violence, his drink shattered on the rug. He hit a marble pillar, his hands splaying against the cool stone, nowhere left to go. His face was a mask of pure, gibbering terror.
“You can’t—my father is Arl Howe! You’re an elf!”
He opened his mouth, perhaps to scream, perhaps to offer another bribe.
Conor’s longsword thrust forward, a line of unwavering finality. The point entered Vaughan’s open mouth, punched through the soft palate at the back of his throat, and buried itself in the wooden pillar behind him with a solid thunk.
At the same moment, Soris’s two-handed swing connected. The mace’s spiked head caved in Vaughan’s face from the upper lip upwards in a single, pulping impact.
For a second, Vaughan remained pinned upright between steel and wood, a grotesque statue. Then Conor yanked his sword free, and the body slid down the pillar, leaving a thick, dark streak on the marble.
They turned to Shianni.
She had uncurled slightly, watching it all through her one good eye. The firelight caught the tracks of tears through the dirt and blood on her face. Her breathing was shallow, pained.
Conor knelt, his shield clattering to the side. He didn’t touch her, just lowered himself to her level. “The others,” he said, his voice rough from disuse. “Nesiara. Valora. They’re safe. Back in the sitting room.”
Shianni’s good eye searched his face, the face she’d known since childhood, now splattered with the life of nobles. Her voice was a broken whisper, laced with pain and a terrible hope. “Did you kill them all?”
Conor held her gaze, the fire reflecting in his own eyes. He gave a slow, single nod.
“Like dogs, Shianni.”