Chapter 7: Cause for Alarm.
The silence in the Main Hall was a physical thing, thick and suffocating, broken only by the crackle of the eternal fire and the ragged breath of the mud-splattered messenger kneeling on the polished marble. The smell of fear and wet wool cut through the scent of beeswax and old stone.
“Southweald,” the man gasped, his eyes wide. “A score of farms. They came at dusk. Not a horde, sire, but… numerous. Genlocks. Hurlocks. An ogre.”
Kerr was already moving, the playful glint from earlier that day replaced by a cold, flat light. He didn’t look at the seneschal, or the guards. His eyes found Anora, standing by their thrones. Her face was pale, but utterly still. Her gaze met his, and in that fraction of a second, a thousand words passed between them: the strategic assessment, the threat to their people, the unspoken fear that this was more than a random raid. Her chin dipped, a single, sharp nod.
Consent. A queen’s order. A wife’s trust.
“Armed and mounted!” Kerr’s voice, usually so ready with a jest, now cracked through the hall like a whip. He was already striding towards the archway, tearing the ceremonial brooch from his tunic. “Forget the parade armor. Bring my Legion plate. Now!”
He left the hall in a whirlwind of shouted orders, the palace transforming from a seat of power into a war camp in moments.
The rain had started, a cold, needling drizzle that did nothing to wash away the stink of smoke on the southern wind. Kerr rode at the head of two dozen mounted knights, the King’s Guard straining to keep pace with his fury. He’d outpaced them for a mile, his big black destrier eating the road, before reluctantly allowing them to catch up. The obsidian dwarven plates of his armor were beaded with rain, the werewolf pelt at his collar a matted, streaming banner. The simple silver crown was fixed tight to his brow, a promise made metal.
They crested a low hill, and the scene unfolded below. A dozen barns burned, orange tongues licking the bruised sky. Dark, scuttling shapes moved between the homesteads. The distant screams were not of battle, but of terror—families trapped in root cellars, behind barricaded doors.
HIS VOICE WAS BOILED THUNDER, cutting through the wind and the drumming hooves. “ARCHERS! ON MY FLANK! LOOSE AT WILL IN RANGE AND DO NOT SPARE A THOUGHT FOR ME!”
He knew they hesitated. Shooting into a melee with their king in it was every archer’s nightmare. “ARROWS CANNOT PIERCE THIS PLATE! SAVE OUR PEOPLE!”
The Warrior King did not break stride. He rode into the fray not as a tactician surveying the field, but as a force of nature. A hurlock turned, its rusted axe raised. Kerr’s hammer, a massive head of steel on an oaken haft, swung in a blurred arc. The creature’s skull gave way like an overripe melon, wet and final. He swung left, caving in a genlock’s chest with a sickening crunch. He bashed, smashed, cleared a path of shattered bone and dark gore.
Seeing a pack of genlocks trying to dig at a cellar door near a burning shed, he wrenched his mount aside. “HARDEN!” he bellowed to his captain, throwing himself from the saddle before the horse had fully stopped. He hit the mud, rolled, and came up in a crouch, shield high. “HEAVY BATTALION, WITH ME! THE REST—DEFEND THE FAMILIES! GET THEM TO THE TREELINE!”
His presence was a lodestone. The men, spurred by his impossible pace and unwavering courage, rallied with a roar. They formed a grinding wedge of steel around him.
A hurlock’s massive blade came down in an overhead chop. Kerr caught it on his shield, the impact shivering up his arm, and responded not with a block, but a savage forward shove that unbalanced the creature. His hammer swung low, a brutal, sweeping strike that shattered both its kneecaps with audible snaps. As it crumpled, screaming, a second hammer blow, an uppercut from hell, caught it under the jaw. Its head tore free in a spray of black ichor.
He was a study in brutal economy. Deflect high, break low, shatter the skull. His men followed his example, the butchery becoming a grim, efficient harvest. The darkspawn numbers, which had seemed so overwhelming to the farmers, began to thin against the disciplined, inspired fury of the Fereldan heavy infantry.
Then the ground shook.
The ogre lumbered from behind a collapsing barn, a wall of filthy muscle and horned flesh. It saw Kerr, the shiny, roaring center of the resistance, and charged with a mindless bellow.
“Hold the line!” Kerr snarled to his men, and stepped forward to meet it.
He didn’t dodge. He planted his feet in the churned mud, shield braced, and took the charge. The impact drove him back a full three feet, his boots plowing deep furrows. The ogre roared in his face, breath reeking of carrion. Kerr, grunting with strain, shoved back. For a second, they were locked in a contest of pure strength, the king’s corded muscles standing out like cables against the monster’s bulk.
He shifted his weight, just an inch. The ogre stumbled forward. In that moment of imbalance, Kerr’s hammer rose and fell in a shining arc, connecting with a crack that echoed across the battlefield. It struck the base of the ogre’s skull. The beast staggered, dazed.
Kerr didn’t pause. He gripped his hammer two-handed, took a wide stance, and swung upward from the ground with every ounce of his size and anger. The hammerhead connected with the same spot, with a force that didn’t just crush bone—it separated it.
The ogre’s massive body froze. Its head lolled forward, neck broken within the thick sheath of its own skin, a grotesque, lifeless pendulum. It swayed, then toppled like a felled tree.
Silence, for a heartbeat. Then a cheer erupted from the Fereldan lines, raw and triumphant. The remaining darkspawn, leaderless, were cut down in moments. The butchery was mercifully quick.
Kerr stood panting over the ogre’s corpse, steam rising from his armor in the cold rain. He looked around. The fires were being doused. Families were emerging, weeping, being ushered to safety by his soldiers. No new casualties after their arrival. A clean victory.
But the tension didn’t leave his shoulders. This wasn’t a stray band. This was a probing finger, testing a seam in their kingdom’s armor. A coordinated attack on food stores right before winter. It stank of strategy.
He shoved the tip of his hammer into the mud to clean the worst of the filth. “Captain!” he barked.
The man jogged over, helm under his arm, face grimy but elated. “Sire! A glorious rout!”
“Secure the perimeter. Burn the darkspawn corpses. Help these people rebuild what you can. Leave a garrison.” Kerr’s words were clipped, his mind already racing back to Denerim. To the war room. To her.
“You’re leaving, sire?”
Kerr pulled his hammer free and slung it onto his back. He strode toward his waiting horse, the werewolf pelt heavy with rain and blood. “This was a message,” he said, swinging into the saddle. “I need to confer with the Queen. We must write to Weisshaupt. The Grey Wardens need to know their stragglers are getting bold.”
He looked north, towards the palace, towards Anora. The heat of battle was cooling, replaced by a cold, strategic dread. The fight in the mud was over. The real one was just beginning.