She could be quiet when she wanted to be, moving ahead from the main group and keeping to the fringes. In a wilderness like this, Jaden was the best choice to head up a scouting party and having had some experience in trailing after him, moving along to where he wanted the rest of them to be wasn't particularly difficult. Like a wraith, she slid around tree trunks, her footfalls made very little noise when they encountered grass and brush. Now that they were at the thick of it and moving towards Ostagar, cheerful chatter had given way to contemplative silence. In spite of her gregarious nature she was, deep down, a consumate academic. She knew that no amount of past experiences or research would wholly prepare her for the things they would encounter in the ruined fortress.
Whatever reverie had ensnared her in the last moment or two faded away as metal rang against metal. The sound exploded somewhere in front and to the side of her, heralding a violent skirmish. Deidre paused in her tracks, her back pressed tightly against the bole of a nearby tree and her hazel eyes flicking over to Jaden. Her brows lifted in inquiry, What is it? writ plainly on a visage that had transformed from serious to wary. Still, she was one to trust her own eyes, sliding down into a crouch and producing a small mirror from her pocket to angle towards the direction of the noises. It was a small trick she had learned over the years, the more deeply embroiled she became into travel-related trouble; sometimes, it was better to see it first than revealing herself.
Whoever the blonde was, she was outnumbered. She narrowed her eyes and slid the palm-sized object back where she was. However, at Jaden's words, she blinked. "What?" she hissed softly. "What are you going to do in the meantime?" She already knew, but it meant to be said -- this was not the first time she had traveled with the elven Grey Warden, after all. She knew how he was.
Orders were orders, however. She glanced over at Nivak -- as silent and ready as one of his brethren ought to be. At the very least, if she left, the Warden wouldn't be alone.
"Don't do anything reckless." She bit at the irony. Dee Aisli, intrepid adventuress, telling someone else not to be reckless. With a quiet salute from where she was crouched, she slid back into the shadowy fringes of the path in order to (Maker, help her) do what she was told.
She had taken care to be painfully aware as to where the main group was even though she had moved ahead from the rest. While her journeys have been done in her lonesome in the most recent years, it wasn't always true, having led her own share of expeditions in the days when the Chantry was more generous with its funding. It was easier to keep off the beaten path, winding her way through Summer's detritus of dried twigs and leaves as she made an effort to reach the rest of her group as expediently as possible without giving away her position. The last thing she wanted was to be followed; she looked over her shoulder on occasion and stopped (but never long) to prick her ears and made certain that she wasn't being tailed by anything.
The archaeologist knew that her side of the battle was about to commence; if it wasn't going to happen now, it was going to happen soon.
The distinct noises of several feet, of armor, of wheels creaking against a narrow, earthen avenue, reached her ears. Deidre carefully poked her head out from around a tree. Catching sight of her own party, she whistled softly -- strains of a tune that she had instructed the members of her group that she would be using whenever she would be returning to the main fold. The last thing she wanted was to barge out of the proverbial woodwork without any warning whatsoever and be riddled by arrows or daggers before she even said anything helpful. They were on a mission to a dangerous place where their objective was to kill something large and inhuman; she didn't even want to speculate about the tension levels of her crew.