Skyholdâs bridge had exactly three gates: there was the big main one that led into the fortress, the one at the very edge on the other side, and one in the middle. It was before this one that Khari now stood, weighed down with full armor and gear, rolling her shoulders and shaking out her arms. She tipped her head back to get a better sense of what she was working with; her last few attempts had been less than impressive in part because sheâd simply failed to plan ahead. Which was ridiculous; she hadnât learned all those strategies and tactical games for nothing. She needed to tackle this more like chess and less like an enemyâthat would make the difference, she was sure of it.
Exhaling a controlled breath, she backed up about ten paces. A running start could get her up to that irregular stone there, and after that, the pattern of the arch might help. The gate was extremely tall, and the part that actually moved was quite sturdy, but that didnât mean it was impossible to breach. Seemed like a good thing to know for sure.
Bouncing up and down on her toes, Khari lunged into a run, counting the steps out carefully. She didnât jump, exactlyâit was more like she started running up the wall, and at the moment she felt gravity begin to shift against her, she pushed against it with all the strength she had, reaching upwards. Her fingers just caught the jutting stone, and she pulled herself up mostly by the strength of her arms. She didnât have a lot of that, compared to some people, but crucially, she did have enough to deadlift herself, even in the armor.
When sheâd pulled herself up far enough, she swung one of her legs out, the toe of her boot catching on the fringe of the archway. Grinning, she shifted her weight gradually from her shaking arms to her leg, giving herself the leverage to push off the rest of the way and swing herself up to the next likely hand-hold. Just like everything, if she made it about momentum and motion, she could do things that would otherwise be impossible. It took her a while, but when her hands at last grasped the upper edge of the gate and she pulled herself up onto it, she let out a short bark of triumphant laughter and sat herself on the edge, letting her feet dangle over it. Heights had never been among Khari's fears.
She faced outwards, away from the castle, leaning back on her hands and allowing herself to relish in her sense of accomplishment. It wasnât any big deal, really, but sheâd set herself a task and figured out how to do it. Besides, climbing was a good skill to have, and she couldnât let herself get left behind because she couldnât hack it next to someone like Rom, who probably climbed castle walls and stuff pretty regularly back in Tevinter. After everything in the mountains and the Hinterlands, Khari wanted to make sure sheâd be of some use in any situation that might come upâand Haven had expanded the list of possibilities by a lot.
A group of four approached from the far gate, clad in standard Inquisition scout gear. All four peered up at the elf perched atop the middle gate, exchanging a few muffled words and looks among themselves, the tone of which was beyond Khari's hearing. The head scout, Lia, was in the front of them, a warm-looking fur cloak wrapped around most of her upper body. A heavy pack full of gear hung from her back, and a few climbing axes and hooks dangled from her belt. By the looks of her, it had been a long day of work in the mountains. She looked up at Khari, shielding her eyes with a hand from the sun, which sank fairly low in the sky.
"You need any help getting down?" she called, smiling amicably.
Khari hadnât really considered her descent as much as the ascent, but these gates were meant to be manned, which meant there was probably a way down. A quick glance behind her revealed a trapdoor, long-unused by the look of it, in the roof, and she shook her head. âWell, not yet. If this staircase has gone to shit, though, Iâll be asking to borrow your grappling hook.â She grinned, then pushed herself up, moving over to the trapdoor. It took several tugs to lift, and came away from its closed position only with a heavy creaking and groaning, but aside from the dust, the stairs looked useable, having been hewn from stone.
The trip down was pretty short, and put her out near the lower gate controls, unnecessarily since it was open for the scoutsâ return anyway. She moved around to stand in the archway and waved a hand lackadaisically at Lia. âAnd now I can say I made a gate inspection. Functional, but really old.â She shrugged. âWhere are you guys headed back from?â
"Today? From the west." She waved a hand in the general direction, vaguely indicating the mountains. "We don't know much about the specifics of the area, and considering the army that snuck up on us, Commander wants us to learn this area like our hometowns. So far, that means climbing mountains and checking out caves. Nothing so far that a force of much size could use. We're pretty isolated here, for better or worse." She tugged on the strap of her pouch before gesturing for Khari to walk with her, as she made her way through the gate.
"I never got a chance to thank you before," she said, as they passed under the shade that the arch offered. "The night we were attacked, you and the Herald saved my life. I guess I'm lucky you two decided to head outside of the walls."
Khari blinked; she recalled the event, of course, but she couldnât say sheâd ever particularly expected to be thanked for it. People generally didnât thank her for thingsâmaybe sheâd have to get used to it. The Inquisition was pretty polite, on balance. âNo problem. I mean, there was a problem, obviously, but it definitely wasnât your fault. Thanks for warning us.â Unfortunate as it was, Liaâs arrival had tipped them off to the oncoming forces, and even the little warning theyâd had ended up being pretty useful. Khari supposed that was the point of having a scout regiment.
This was the part where she usually would have asked something relatively benign, but interesting, like how it was that Lia had joined up with the Inquisition exactly. Unfortunately, she already knew that bit, specifically that she was a Lion. Which left one other conspicuously-obvious query, and it was one Khari really didnât want to ask, mostly because sheâd probably find the conversation that followed really uncomfortable, and that wouldnât be Liaâs fault, either. So she was left in the unusual position of not really having anything to say, her brain-to-mouth filter kicking in for once. How did other people do this so often?
Lia, however, was quite perceptive to Khari's struggle, and after the silence became a bit uncomfortable, she broke into a fairly knowing grin. "I'm not actually Dalish, by the way. Probably worth mentioning." It wasn't obvious just by looking at her. Her clothes and armor weren't Dalish in appearance, but then, none of the official Inquisition forces were allowed to keep wearing what they had before, so she could easily have been. Her vallaslin was legitimate, something that was plain for Khari's eyes to see. They were for Andruil, Lady of the Hunt. Very Dalish choice. She was a good shot with a bow, and the Lead Scout for the Inquisition. In fact, everything pointed to her being Dalish other than her word.
"It's just..." she hesitated. "You're not with a clan, and you're... not at all like the Dalish I've met. Like, at all. It's cool, is what I'm trying to say. Everyone finds their own way, right?"
âIt is?â That was something sheâd never been told before. Khari blinked several times, regarding Lia with a very confused expression. âUh⊠thatâs new. Usually when I meet other Dalish, or well, people with the vallaslin, they either donât ask or donât approve, honestly. My clan werenât, uh⊠they think Iâm a fool, more or less.â Some of them had been a little kinder about it than others, but in the end, none of them had approved of her dreams or the direction she wanted her life to take. âThe truth is, even if you donât have a clan, youâre probably more Dalish than I am. Iâm lenâalas lathâdin, by this point.â
She hadnât intended to say quite so much, but she pushed down the burgeoning sense of shame, reminding herself that she had nothing to be ashamed of, really. Funny how that didnât always work. Maybe because it wasnât really shame she felt.
"Loads of groups seem to think that way, though," Lia countered. "Casting off people who disagree with them as incorrect or fools. The Chantry, the Dalish, the people who want freedom for mages, the people who don't, Fereldan people, Orlesian people, every other kind of people. Just because you were born in a clan doesn't mean that's what you have to be, right?" She shrugged, and they passed through the last gate together, entering Skyhold properly.
She stopped, ruffling the back of her hair, freeing some of it from a strap that had caught it. "I was raised in Kirkwall's Alienage, which is about as dirt elf as it gets. But I got lucky, and a clanless Dalish took me under his wing. Really Dalish, this guy, you two probably wouldn't get along real well. But he taught me a lot about how I could be better than a dirt elf, groveling at the feet of humans. I'd... been through some things, so that appealed to me." There was obviously a lot more to it than that, but it didn't seem to be the sort of thing she was willing to divulge in casual conversation.
"I'm guessing you had a pretty good teacher too, right? I mean, my teacher fought angry, but not like I've seen you, and very few elves fight with big weapons like that." She glanced over at the tavern. "Well, except that fancy elf. And he's... weird."
Khari snorted at that, but she also let it go, shrugging slightly. âWell, Iâm biased, but yes. My teacher was great. The first day we trained, he handed me this exact sword. I could lift it, but definitely not hold it for long. He told me that by the time he was done with me I wouldnât even feel it anymore. He was right.â She grinned, but her expression sobered quickly.
âI think I know what you mean though. About how good it was to feel like someone believed you could be more than everyone else thought. Me, though⊠Iâd always felt that way. Not just about myself, butâŠâ She shook her head. There was a persistent, uncomfortable feeling there that she didn't want to address quite yet. âWell, anyway. He kind of laughed at me, at first, when I told him I wanted to be a chevalier like him. But it didnât take him long to figure out that I was serious. And when he did, he trained me just like he would have trained anyone else. Iâll always be grateful to him for that.â It took a pretty special person to give someone like her a real chance, she thought. Khari wasnât stupidâshe knew what most nobles, most chevaliers, even, thought of elves. She hadnât set her sights on being one of them because she imagined sheâd be welcome.
âBut I guess the situationâs not quite as weird as I figured. The Lions have elves with two-handers, too. Or at least the one, right?â Sheâd fought him, in fact. It wasnât quite so stinging a defeat as Vesryn had dealt her, but sheâd still lost. Yet that one had been a reminder that she needed more practice at what she was doing, and so not discouraging at all. âMust be nice, that no one looks twice at you guys for being elves where you are, and how you are.â Or no one in the company, anyway.
"It is," Lia confirmed, obviously wanting to avoid looking like she was gloating or anything. "The cities try to make the elves there feel that way all the time. Like they don't belong if they set foot outside their hovels. The common people, that is, and sometimes they don't even mean to. Joining the Lions was one of the best choices I've ever made."
She titled her head towards the tavern. "Want a drink? I'll buy."
âDonât think Iâve ever turned down a free drink before.â Khari rubbed her hands together with intentional exaggeration. âWhatâs the most expensive thing they serve?â She grinned to make the joke obvious, and ducked into the tavern after Lia.
Exhaling a controlled breath, she backed up about ten paces. A running start could get her up to that irregular stone there, and after that, the pattern of the arch might help. The gate was extremely tall, and the part that actually moved was quite sturdy, but that didnât mean it was impossible to breach. Seemed like a good thing to know for sure.
Bouncing up and down on her toes, Khari lunged into a run, counting the steps out carefully. She didnât jump, exactlyâit was more like she started running up the wall, and at the moment she felt gravity begin to shift against her, she pushed against it with all the strength she had, reaching upwards. Her fingers just caught the jutting stone, and she pulled herself up mostly by the strength of her arms. She didnât have a lot of that, compared to some people, but crucially, she did have enough to deadlift herself, even in the armor.
When sheâd pulled herself up far enough, she swung one of her legs out, the toe of her boot catching on the fringe of the archway. Grinning, she shifted her weight gradually from her shaking arms to her leg, giving herself the leverage to push off the rest of the way and swing herself up to the next likely hand-hold. Just like everything, if she made it about momentum and motion, she could do things that would otherwise be impossible. It took her a while, but when her hands at last grasped the upper edge of the gate and she pulled herself up onto it, she let out a short bark of triumphant laughter and sat herself on the edge, letting her feet dangle over it. Heights had never been among Khari's fears.
She faced outwards, away from the castle, leaning back on her hands and allowing herself to relish in her sense of accomplishment. It wasnât any big deal, really, but sheâd set herself a task and figured out how to do it. Besides, climbing was a good skill to have, and she couldnât let herself get left behind because she couldnât hack it next to someone like Rom, who probably climbed castle walls and stuff pretty regularly back in Tevinter. After everything in the mountains and the Hinterlands, Khari wanted to make sure sheâd be of some use in any situation that might come upâand Haven had expanded the list of possibilities by a lot.
A group of four approached from the far gate, clad in standard Inquisition scout gear. All four peered up at the elf perched atop the middle gate, exchanging a few muffled words and looks among themselves, the tone of which was beyond Khari's hearing. The head scout, Lia, was in the front of them, a warm-looking fur cloak wrapped around most of her upper body. A heavy pack full of gear hung from her back, and a few climbing axes and hooks dangled from her belt. By the looks of her, it had been a long day of work in the mountains. She looked up at Khari, shielding her eyes with a hand from the sun, which sank fairly low in the sky.
"You need any help getting down?" she called, smiling amicably.
Khari hadnât really considered her descent as much as the ascent, but these gates were meant to be manned, which meant there was probably a way down. A quick glance behind her revealed a trapdoor, long-unused by the look of it, in the roof, and she shook her head. âWell, not yet. If this staircase has gone to shit, though, Iâll be asking to borrow your grappling hook.â She grinned, then pushed herself up, moving over to the trapdoor. It took several tugs to lift, and came away from its closed position only with a heavy creaking and groaning, but aside from the dust, the stairs looked useable, having been hewn from stone.
The trip down was pretty short, and put her out near the lower gate controls, unnecessarily since it was open for the scoutsâ return anyway. She moved around to stand in the archway and waved a hand lackadaisically at Lia. âAnd now I can say I made a gate inspection. Functional, but really old.â She shrugged. âWhere are you guys headed back from?â
"Today? From the west." She waved a hand in the general direction, vaguely indicating the mountains. "We don't know much about the specifics of the area, and considering the army that snuck up on us, Commander wants us to learn this area like our hometowns. So far, that means climbing mountains and checking out caves. Nothing so far that a force of much size could use. We're pretty isolated here, for better or worse." She tugged on the strap of her pouch before gesturing for Khari to walk with her, as she made her way through the gate.
"I never got a chance to thank you before," she said, as they passed under the shade that the arch offered. "The night we were attacked, you and the Herald saved my life. I guess I'm lucky you two decided to head outside of the walls."
Khari blinked; she recalled the event, of course, but she couldnât say sheâd ever particularly expected to be thanked for it. People generally didnât thank her for thingsâmaybe sheâd have to get used to it. The Inquisition was pretty polite, on balance. âNo problem. I mean, there was a problem, obviously, but it definitely wasnât your fault. Thanks for warning us.â Unfortunate as it was, Liaâs arrival had tipped them off to the oncoming forces, and even the little warning theyâd had ended up being pretty useful. Khari supposed that was the point of having a scout regiment.
This was the part where she usually would have asked something relatively benign, but interesting, like how it was that Lia had joined up with the Inquisition exactly. Unfortunately, she already knew that bit, specifically that she was a Lion. Which left one other conspicuously-obvious query, and it was one Khari really didnât want to ask, mostly because sheâd probably find the conversation that followed really uncomfortable, and that wouldnât be Liaâs fault, either. So she was left in the unusual position of not really having anything to say, her brain-to-mouth filter kicking in for once. How did other people do this so often?
Lia, however, was quite perceptive to Khari's struggle, and after the silence became a bit uncomfortable, she broke into a fairly knowing grin. "I'm not actually Dalish, by the way. Probably worth mentioning." It wasn't obvious just by looking at her. Her clothes and armor weren't Dalish in appearance, but then, none of the official Inquisition forces were allowed to keep wearing what they had before, so she could easily have been. Her vallaslin was legitimate, something that was plain for Khari's eyes to see. They were for Andruil, Lady of the Hunt. Very Dalish choice. She was a good shot with a bow, and the Lead Scout for the Inquisition. In fact, everything pointed to her being Dalish other than her word.
"It's just..." she hesitated. "You're not with a clan, and you're... not at all like the Dalish I've met. Like, at all. It's cool, is what I'm trying to say. Everyone finds their own way, right?"
âIt is?â That was something sheâd never been told before. Khari blinked several times, regarding Lia with a very confused expression. âUh⊠thatâs new. Usually when I meet other Dalish, or well, people with the vallaslin, they either donât ask or donât approve, honestly. My clan werenât, uh⊠they think Iâm a fool, more or less.â Some of them had been a little kinder about it than others, but in the end, none of them had approved of her dreams or the direction she wanted her life to take. âThe truth is, even if you donât have a clan, youâre probably more Dalish than I am. Iâm lenâalas lathâdin, by this point.â
She hadnât intended to say quite so much, but she pushed down the burgeoning sense of shame, reminding herself that she had nothing to be ashamed of, really. Funny how that didnât always work. Maybe because it wasnât really shame she felt.
"Loads of groups seem to think that way, though," Lia countered. "Casting off people who disagree with them as incorrect or fools. The Chantry, the Dalish, the people who want freedom for mages, the people who don't, Fereldan people, Orlesian people, every other kind of people. Just because you were born in a clan doesn't mean that's what you have to be, right?" She shrugged, and they passed through the last gate together, entering Skyhold properly.
She stopped, ruffling the back of her hair, freeing some of it from a strap that had caught it. "I was raised in Kirkwall's Alienage, which is about as dirt elf as it gets. But I got lucky, and a clanless Dalish took me under his wing. Really Dalish, this guy, you two probably wouldn't get along real well. But he taught me a lot about how I could be better than a dirt elf, groveling at the feet of humans. I'd... been through some things, so that appealed to me." There was obviously a lot more to it than that, but it didn't seem to be the sort of thing she was willing to divulge in casual conversation.
"I'm guessing you had a pretty good teacher too, right? I mean, my teacher fought angry, but not like I've seen you, and very few elves fight with big weapons like that." She glanced over at the tavern. "Well, except that fancy elf. And he's... weird."
Khari snorted at that, but she also let it go, shrugging slightly. âWell, Iâm biased, but yes. My teacher was great. The first day we trained, he handed me this exact sword. I could lift it, but definitely not hold it for long. He told me that by the time he was done with me I wouldnât even feel it anymore. He was right.â She grinned, but her expression sobered quickly.
âI think I know what you mean though. About how good it was to feel like someone believed you could be more than everyone else thought. Me, though⊠Iâd always felt that way. Not just about myself, butâŠâ She shook her head. There was a persistent, uncomfortable feeling there that she didn't want to address quite yet. âWell, anyway. He kind of laughed at me, at first, when I told him I wanted to be a chevalier like him. But it didnât take him long to figure out that I was serious. And when he did, he trained me just like he would have trained anyone else. Iâll always be grateful to him for that.â It took a pretty special person to give someone like her a real chance, she thought. Khari wasnât stupidâshe knew what most nobles, most chevaliers, even, thought of elves. She hadnât set her sights on being one of them because she imagined sheâd be welcome.
âBut I guess the situationâs not quite as weird as I figured. The Lions have elves with two-handers, too. Or at least the one, right?â Sheâd fought him, in fact. It wasnât quite so stinging a defeat as Vesryn had dealt her, but sheâd still lost. Yet that one had been a reminder that she needed more practice at what she was doing, and so not discouraging at all. âMust be nice, that no one looks twice at you guys for being elves where you are, and how you are.â Or no one in the company, anyway.
"It is," Lia confirmed, obviously wanting to avoid looking like she was gloating or anything. "The cities try to make the elves there feel that way all the time. Like they don't belong if they set foot outside their hovels. The common people, that is, and sometimes they don't even mean to. Joining the Lions was one of the best choices I've ever made."
She titled her head towards the tavern. "Want a drink? I'll buy."
âDonât think Iâve ever turned down a free drink before.â Khari rubbed her hands together with intentional exaggeration. âWhatâs the most expensive thing they serve?â She grinned to make the joke obvious, and ducked into the tavern after Lia.