Dragon Age: The Masked Empire

by Patrick Weekes

  “Are they with us?” she called into Michel’s ear.

  “We shall know in a moment, Majesty,” he said without turning.

  Ahead of the city guards, Comte Pierre and his chevaliers rode toward them. Pierre’s armor was stained with soot from the ashes that had spread across the city, and his face was drawn with fatigue and shiny with sweat. He had not had time to put his helmet back on after the morning’s display.

  “Your Radiance,” he yelled as they approached.

  The battle had not ranged close to Halamshiral proper, and Pierre and his men had not yet engaged either side. This was when the trap would spring, if he were part of it. His weapon was drawn, as was only right. He was riding hard for them. She felt Michel tense in front of her, ready to strike.

  “Get to safety!” Pierre shouted, and rode past them. “The city, or flee east to Jader if you must! We will hold them as long as we can!”

  Celene turned and saw Gaspard’s forces thundering toward them from behind, and from the right as well. She saw less than a score of her own soldiers still alive, and no resistance to stop Gaspard’s men from flanking her and penning her in.

  Comte Pierre of Halamshiral and his score of chevaliers charged past them at the enemy line closing in behind them.

  She saw the rain of arrows come down into Pierre’s men. They were far enough away for Gaspard’s archers to fire without fear of hitting friendly troops. Pierre took an arrow in the shoulder but kept riding, putting himself and his men between her and Gaspard.

  And still, there were not enough of them to check the whole line.

  As if hearing her thoughts, Michel called back, “Some of Gaspard’s men will get by!” She had not noticed him looking back, and she wondered if he could tell just by the sound of hoof beats.

  “Can you make the city?”

  “Perhaps.” There was a question at the end of the sentence, words he was unwilling to say even while carrying his empress out of battle.

  “Michel, if we reach Halamshiral, can we hold it?”

  “The city guards were stretched thin already by the rebellion, and I would guess Pierre rode with most of his chevaliers,” Michel said. An arrow clanged off his armored shoulder. Ahead of them, Pierre’s foot soldiers died under a withering black rain. “Most of them will die, as will our own soldiers. With just the common city troops … It may give you a chance to negotiate a surrender, but it will not save the throne.”

  Celene swallowed. Pierre and his men would not die for nothing. Her men would not die for nothing.

  “The Winter Palace?”

  “It is not built for defense, Majesty.”

  She had feared as much, but had wanted to hear it from her champion to be sure. It would have to be Jader, then, several days’ ride to the east, where Lady Seryl, a longtime ally of absolute loyalty, would shelter them.

  “Get us to the trees, Michel,” she said. “We retreat to Jader, contact Val Royeaux, and return to crush Gaspard with the full might of the empire.”

  “As you command, Majesty,” he said, and his charger pulled to the left, away from the city gates and Gaspard’s closing men.

  They rode, and behind them, the soldiers of Orlais died so that Celene might escape.

  * * *

  Briala came back to herself in the dubious comfort of a prison coach, her head throbbing.

  It was far more gentle a prison than a common barred wagon, where she would have ridden on bare wood, open to the elements and the thrown rocks of human peasants. The coach had a seat, and it was even padded, if thinly. The barred side windows were curtained, though the morning light shone through the thin red fabric. Though the door lacked a handle, a small chamber pot sat in a holder by the wall. If not for the shackles, Briala could almost have fancied herself still traveling to Halamshiral, Celene’s favored servant, secretly preventing a great and needless tragedy.

  Then the stench of the burning buildings reached her. The smoke stung at her throat, raw from where she had screamed the night before. Her armor was scuffed where she had fallen to her knees, wrenching free of the chevaliers’ grip. Michel had struck her, she remembered dimly. It hadn’t been punitive. She could see the wary concern etched into his features, lit by fire. The other chevaliers might have taken her shrieks, her pulling away, as resistance, and done what any chevalier would do to a knife-ear who didn’t know her place. Michel’s gentle strike had been an act of mercy.

  She tried to remember whether his expression had given away any greater feeling about the fire, then gave up when sitting upright made her head pound with pain.

  The coach was moving, traveling the main road out of Halamshiral if the gentle bumps and jolts were any gauge. Either Gaspard’s gambit had happened so swiftly and smoothly that it was already finished, or it had not yet started.

  That Gaspard had a plan, she did not doubt. Celene had removed herself from Val Royeaux, thinking herself clever in outmaneuvering her cousin. It would never strike her that here in Halamshiral, with only enough soldiers to crush some elven rebels, she would be vulnerable. Briala would have warned her.

  She supposed she still could.

  Her arms had been shackled behind her, and they ached already from the uncomfortable position. Being unconscious in her armor had not helped, either. She lay down on the seat, lifted her legs, and kicked on the sliding panel that separated her from the driver.

  After a moment, the panel slid back, and a gray-bearded man wearing a soldier’s helmet and a chainmail vest squinted in at her. “What do you want, rabbit?”

  Briala swallowed. “Some water, please.”

  He frowned, evidently thinking over this outlandish request. “Wouldn’t normally give a prisoner any food until noon.”

  She stared at him without saying anything and after a moment, he grunted and held a waterskin up to the panel. With her arms shackled behind her, she couldn’t take it. Instead, she raised her face up as close to the panel as she could and opened her mouth.

  The man unstoppered the skin and let her drink until she pulled back. He made no lewd comments, and she didn’t even see a smirk. “Thank you,” she said when she was finished.

  “Orders are to treat you gently. Just don’t cause any trouble,” he said, not unkindly, “and we’ll have a nice quiet ride back to Val Royeaux.” He slid the panel shut.

  She looked at the wooden panel while tepid water dripped from her chin.

  She could be wrong. Gaspard could legitimately be so surprised by Celene marching on Halamshiral that he had no ambush prepared. He could still want to win the day through diplomacy and politics, limiting the spilled blood to the elves of Halamshiral. He might lack the nerve to commit treason by attacking Celene directly.

  But Briala knew a great deal about Gaspard, and she would never describe him as lacking nerve.

  The threat was real. The question was whether to raise the alarm.

  It would show her loyalty, even in the face of what had happened here … but what good was that, precisely? Her loyalty had never been in doubt before, and all it had earned her was an order not to mistreat the prisoner on the ride back to Val Royeaux.

  She had loved Celene. She did love Celene. And she knew without question that the elves of Orlais fared better under her rule than they would under Gaspard’s.

  But she could still smell the smoke of the slums burning.

  She was still sitting silent, ready to knock on the wooden panel but not yet moving, when the cry of alarm rose around her some time later.

  Moments after that came the buzzing wind of hundreds of arrows followed by the shrieks of men and horses dying. Calls to protect the empress were drowned out by thundering hooves, and then the crash of metal rocked the coach.

  The noise was deafening, a cacophony of clanging and crunching marked by grunts and screams as men died outside all around her. Briala shut her eyes, though it did little to help. She heard arrows thud on the wood of her prison, and then a sharp crack directly in front of her.


  She opened her eyes and saw that an arrow had ripped through the curtain and sunk a finger’s width deep into the seat a few inches from her leg.

  Briala kept her eyes open after that.

  A sharp jolt rocked the coach, and a horse screamed from the impact. Briala heard her guard yell, and the coach lurched into motion. Briala lay back down on the seat, bracing her shoulders and legs against opposite walls of the coach, and held on as the jolts and bumps rattled her like a stone in a cup.

  Then came the pounding of hooves right beside the coach, and a yell from the driver’s seat that cut off as metal crunched on metal. A moment later, the coach shuddered to a stop with a suddenness that sent Briala tumbling from the seat.

  She lay on the floor, her head still pounding, as the sounds of battle continued around her. Men yelled and screamed and died, and horses thundered past, and Briala’s coach rattled from the noise.

  Briala had no idea how long it lasted. It was impossible to think with the coach shaking around her, arrows slamming into the walls and men crying for the Maker’s mercy outside. She huddled as best she could, teeth chattering, until finally, some unknown time later, she realized that the roar of battle had started to quiet. When the coach stopped shaking, she forced herself back to her knees.

  There was no formal end, but when she heard the sound of men giving orders grow closer than the battle cries, she moved back to her seat.

  The calls around her had the same world-weary constancy of the chatelaine preparing for a minor ball back in Val Royeaux. Get our wounded over here. Don’t waste time on the buckles, cut the damned thing off him before he bleeds to death. Send men with ropes to get the loose horses. One of the lords needs a surgeon for his leg. Don’t kill the poor bastard, he might be one of ours under all that mess.

  “In the wagon? Celene’s elf, my lord.”

  Briala opened her eyes.

  Grand Duke Gaspard opened the door to her wagon a moment later. He was unmasked, and he had taken off his helmet, but she knew his face from private encounters years ago, back when he and Celene had been on better terms. His hair was sweat-slicked and his face flushed from the morning’s fight, and his armor bore dents and scuffs that proved he had not hung back to let others fight the battle for him.

  “You removed the emblem of Chalons,” she said, nodding at his bare armor. “I knew you would have a means to justify it by the chevaliers’ code.”

  “I remember you,” he said, squinting thoughtfully into the dimness of the coach. “Her handmaid. I was sure I’d seen you unmasked. No armor then, of course.”

  “Of course.” Briala inclined her head politely.

  Gaspard smiled. “And there’s always a way to justify it,” he said. “In defense of honor, or protection against corruption.” He leaned on the coach, one gauntleted hand gripping the doorframe. The other pointed at her. The silverite glinted blue in the wan morning light. “Against a mad empress in league with the elves.”

  “So you lied to your fellow nobles—”

  “Lied?” Gaspard cut her off and shook his head, still smiling. “There was more than enough truth in what I said. Don’t be modest, girl. Noble Orlesian sons and daughters came back from Celene’s university talking about improving the alienages, and the professors write that they’re being asked to teach elves now as well. The taxes always seemed to slide around the poorer merchants. Maker’s breath, how many times did I ask for leave to mount an expedition to drive out the Dalish only to get sent off to hunt for darkspawn instead?”

  “Three.” Briala smiled thinly.

  “I’m impressed,” Gaspard said, with another shake of his head. “One little elf, and you had the Orlesian Empire dancing to your tune. So, no, I’d say that the only lie I told was when I suggested you ruled our empress with arts practiced in the bedchamber.”

  Briala’s breath caught. It was only for a moment, and she tried to cover it with a disgusted sneer, but Gaspard, whatever his faults, was an observant man.

  “Oh, Maker, it’s true?” He staggered back as if shot, roaring with laughter. “No wonder she refused to marry me!” He actually pounded the side of the coach. Briala felt herself flushing and squared her shoulders as best she could with her arms still shackled behind her as Gaspard looked back in, wiping his eyes. “I thought she was too proud, too idealistic, but I suppose my manhood was just the wrong tool for the job. I might as well have been hunting darkspawn with cold iron.” He grinned at her. “When I should’ve been carrying silverite.”

  “You’re saying I’m silverite?” Briala asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You’re easier on the eyes than I am, rabbit.”

  “So you spread the rumors, which forced her to crush the rebellion instead of letting it sputter out and die peacefully … and because you knew she would come out here to make a personal show of force, you used it as a trap.”

  Gaspard’s easy grin faded. “It doesn’t sound like you’re just now putting that together.” At her silence, he nodded. “Why didn’t you warn them?”

  Briala blinked and looked at the wooden panel through which she had spoken to the wagon driver. “I didn’t figure it out until it was too late.”

  “Really?” Gaspard asked, frowning. “That’s quite a shame. A little warning might have saved a lot of chevaliers’ lives.”

  “I did my best to save lives.” Briala pointed with a jerk of her chin back toward Halamshiral. “It seems that I failed.”

  “The interesting thing,” Gaspard said, looking at her thoughtfully, “is that you just told me that you knew I’d set that up, so Celene would have to come in and crush those rebels. But rather than blame me for setting the trap, you blame her for walking into it.”

  “I had never hoped for better from you, my lord.”

  “But you did from her.” Gaspard shook his head. “All these years, gently pushing her on your people’s behalf, and you started to forget how much was her and how much was you. You never thought she’d do something like this. But she’s the Empress of Orlais. She doesn’t care about the elves. She’ll kill every elf in the empire if she has to.”

  Briala glared at him. “You’re lying,” she said, and her voice cracked.

  “Apparently, I lie even less than I think I do,” Gaspard said with a grin that showed his teeth. He stepped back and shut the door, then leaned in and spoke through the barred window. “Now, you sit tight. You’ll be heading back to Val Royeaux, and if you tell the right stories, you’ll be comfortable and unharmed. If you help me with any information that crushes the last of whatever resistance Celene or her allies might come up with—”

  “And that’s why you’re here,” Briala said, and felt a moment’s satisfaction in watching the big nobleman pause. It was the crack in her voice that had done it, the little bit of affected weakness that let him slip up. “I’d wondered why you’d come look in on a knife-eared servant so soon after your great victory.”

  Gaspard chuckled. “I thought I’d see the knife-eared servant who was so important to Celene—”

  “Whom you don’t have yet,” Briala finished. “Celene or her allies, you said. You wanted to see if she’d talked to me. If I knew where she was now. Because despite your ambush, you didn’t capture her. Your swift, sure strike to take the empire doesn’t work without a surrender or a corpse … and you have neither.”

  It hung between them.

  “You’re dangerous,” Gaspard said, lips pursed in thought. He stepped back from the window, and his next words were to his men nearby. “Keep a guard on the coach. Nobody talks to the prisoner.”

  Briala heard the clank and rasp of armor as he strode away, and then, moments later, the soldiers got back to work setting up camp and tending to the wounded.

  They had never captured Felassan, as far as she knew. Celene was free. She had options.

  The options nearly paralyzed her, in fact. Celene in battle, possibly dead, was an idea, a series of actions that closed off certain avenues and opened others. Celene fr
ee, still in command of the empire … was the woman who had burned the elven rebels. The woman Briala had failed to warn.

  It would have been so much easier had Celene died on that field. Briala would have mourned, and felt guilty for mourning the woman who had killed so many of Briala’s people, but whatever happened afterward, it would have been simple.

  But simple would wait. Hopefully, Felassan would do the same, wherever he was.

  Closing her eyes, Briala yanked the arrow—blocked from Gaspard’s view when she’d sat up—free from the seat behind her, and began to work on the shackles.

  * * *

  Gaspard had ordered his tents erected within sight of Halamshiral’s walls.

  He stood, uncomfortable in his armor, while a servant carefully cleaned the signs of battle from his breastplate, polishing away scratches and plastering over dents with a bit of paste that could be painted to match the shining blue-white of the metal.

  It was dull work, better done when Gaspard wasn’t wearing the armor, but Gaspard suspected he might yet need it, and for what was to come, he needed to look noble, not battle-damaged. So for now, he compromised and stood stock-still in his tent while the fussy servant made the breastplate that had saved Gaspard’s life look pretty again.

  When it was finally done, he dismissed the man and strode to the prison tent, his armor gleaming in the midday light. By now, the smoke from Halamshiral’s slums was a dull haze across the sky, and dozens of smaller oily clouds rose from where funeral pyres marked the scene of the morning’s battle. The common prisoners were huddled together under heavy guard, stripped of arms and armor, and the camp healers were doing their best to save as many of Gaspard’s men as they could.

  “The Battle of Halamshiral,” Gaspard said as he lifted the flap and let himself into the prison tent. “What do you think, my lords?”

  “I must admit,” Comte Pierre of Halamshiral rasped from where he lay on a bedroll, a surgeon kneeling beside him, “that I might wish a different name.” The man had been stripped of his armor, and his shoulder and gut were covered with blood-soaked bandages. The shoulder would heal. The gut wouldn’t.