attack of the 4'5" woman Who: Loic Arkaitz, Lee Wyland, Johann Bronson, Nerys Ronain, Signy Dagna, any other members of G1 who want in. Where: Redcliffe. When: Late morning. 1 Ferventis, 9:45. Summary: Johann arrives at Redcliffe to recruit help for the family and friends she's left barricaded in her home, and finds that the situation is more complicated than she hoped. Rating: There will be swears. In progress.
No matter how fit, no matter how determined, one person can only keep rowing for so long before exhaustion takes hold. It’d cost her time, but she’d finally been forced to admit defeat before the sun rose this morning, anchoring her boat right out on the water and sleeping like the dead. She woke up cold and so damn sore she could hardly think straight, joints swole up and eyes leaden in her skull, but she got right back on those oars and kept rowing. There was a fire in her gut that wouldn’t be put out by a little pain.
It had to be the boat, in the end. She was a good enough tracker to keep out of sight for the most part, and she’d killed more than a few Darkspawn in her time, but that was one or two here and there. Stragglers. Raiding parties. This was… cor, something different. One day the Darkspawn just started flooding out of the ground like hornets swarming from a nest, murder and filth and blackness in their wake. She hadn’t seen the like in… well, about fifteen years, and that was a thought could chill anyone straight to the bone. Hundreds of years it was supposed to be between Blights. Hundreds of years. It put her teeth on edge, and it made travelling by land borderline suicidal, though even the boat wasn’t all safe. Not long after she set out she’d skimmed too near a rocky ledge along the shoreline and been peppered with arrows. Never even saw the Darkspawn, safe as it was to assume they’d been behind it. No damage done, but she made sure to stay the blazes out of bowshot range from then onward.
Thrust, pull. Thrust, pull. Hours of it. Her back, her biceps, her butt ached so bad they came out the other side numb. When she finally rounded the outcropping of land that protected the southern bay and got an eyeful of Redcliffe castle above, grand and imposing up on the cliff face, the breath went out of her in relief. Almost there. She laughed wearily and rowed harder. No time to wimp out now, when she was so close.
There was activity in the streets as her nondescript little boat floated up to the docks. The people on the boardwalks moved like startled deer skittish of hunters, fear radiating from the town in waves. Also… a smell, just a trace of it on the air but still lingering. Maker’s balls, she knew that smell. They’d been burning bodies, and if that sweat-awful tang meant anything, they weren’t all human. She felt her stomach twist with anxiety. If Redcliffe had been hit already, if things had deteriorated this fast, would anyone spare a sword for the people barricaded in at her cabin? For her family?
There was a dark-haired human woman sitting on the dock ahead, boat drifting in slowly toward her as the dwarf finally let her arms fall still. Near her, a little spit of a human fella still living somewhere in that awkward place between boyhood and manhood, looking vaguely uncomfortable in a full suit of armor that anyone with half a brain could recognize immediately. If she weren’t so bone tired she’d laugh that the Templars would let a skinny thing like that pretend to be a guard. The nose of her boat bumped against the dock near where the pair lingered, and the dwarf grabbed up a coil of rope from beside her feet, tossing the end of it unceremoniously up into the lounging woman’s lap. “Hoy, darlin’, do us a favor and tie that to the pier,” she called up gruffly.
Though her body was liable to betray her, she hooked her fingers up on the ledge of the dock and tried to haul herself up. The dwarf swore, arms trembling visibly with effort, and sank back down again. “Shit.” She glanced up to the babyfaced Templar, fire and frustration in her eyes. “Either give me a hand up or quit gawking. Ain’t come all the way here to sit in my boat and look pretty.”