The surface was no place for a dwarf. Nivak almost cursed the damn fool notion he taken that if Lythe was leaving the unit to go fight another surface war, someone had better go watch her back and that someone better be him. He hated the surface. Not as much as he would've hated himself if he'd let Lythe go off alone, but nevertheless, he sorely missed the Deep Roads.
He would grudgingly admit that he, well… the most generous word would be appreciated that the new group they'd been assigned to finally had someone both willing and able to give Nivak pointers on surface-scouting and relieve the Legionnaire of the troubles of trying to become self-taught, but wherever they were, every single one of Nivak's taint-blighted ancestors had to be jeering at him. A dwarf learning to scout the surface from an elf. Ridiculous.
And now, once again, they were stumbling over a fight in the middle of nowhere? The surface was as battle-plagued as the Roads, except there wasn't a darkspawn in sight. What, did surfacers go crazy and turn on each other without a greater foe to unify their front against? But Nivak followed after the elf, Jaden, as quickly as he was able -- and keeping the second skin of his armor silent wasn't an issue, it was the damn surface rocks and leaves and other green nonsense -- knowing that the younger elf was one of the Wardens that Lythe so worshipped and that Nivak'd better not let a Warden rush into battle unarmed on his watch.
Of course, by Nivak's perception, the battle was none of their business. He could see, easily, that the fight was about a dozen-to-one, but they didn't know either party. Maybe the lone woman was a victim, or maybe she deserved whatever the larger group intended. Nivak didn't know, or care -- but unfortunately the Warden did, which meant Lythe would, which meant Nivak had to help out anyway. He scowled inside his helmet at the elf's "as you claim to be", but grunted in irritated acknowledgement, slinging his bow off his shoulder and knocking his first arrow.
Fighting against greater numbers was a familiar thing at least, even if their targets weren't darkspawn. Nivak tallied up and gauged the larger band as he waited for Jaden to draw near to them, bow drawn and ready. So as not to ruin the elf's element of surprise, he waited, timing it out, then let the arrow fly just as Jaden struck. One of the men in the attacking band stood out from the rest, clad in robes rather than armor, and Nivak knew by comparison to their travel-companions that that meant mage. He'd never faced a surface mage, of course, but he knew from the rare encounter with darkspawn emissaries that you wanted the mages down first.
His arrow thudded into the mage's back and was rapidly joined by a second, as Nivak drew and released in rapid-fire. Trusting by the way the human staggered and fell that it was out of commission either permanently or long enough for their reinforcements to arrive, Nivak turned his attention on the rest. He held each arrow only long enough to make sure it was steady and neither Jaden nor the woman would stumble in its path, let it fly, and drew another, aiming more to sow a few valuable moments of confusion than to hit any precise marks.