It was not to last.
Nicolas shouted in rage as a large hurlock crashed forcefully into his shield, sending him skittering back several feet on the uneven stone. He tripped and fell backwards, the creature frantically leaping on top of him and biting at his face with its great fangs. Julien spun around, eyes wide with alarm, and hacked the creature almost in half with one swing of his enormous sword. But the damage was already done.
Several short genlocks surged past the prone warrior, snarling with delight as they raced toward Maric and the others in the back. They were slowed by Fiona’s spell, but not enough. Genevieve moved to try to quickly close the gap left by Nicolas’s fall, but she couldn’t. Julien was too busy trying to keep the darkspawn from overwhelming him and Nicolas, swinging his blade in wide arcs around him, and she simply couldn’t hold the line on her own. More darkspawn rushed past them. Their line was broken.
The first genlocks made to throw their spears, but several arrows thunked loudly into their heads before they could attack. They went down, squealing in pain and clawing madly at their faces. Kell stepped forward, frowning as he nocked more arrows and fired them as quickly as he could into the oncoming force.
Utha dropped her pack and prepared to run to meet the darkspawn herself. Maric wondered what the dwarf planned on fighting with, since all she wore were her brown robes and leather gauntlets. He’d never seen her carry a weapon. Did she fight with fists? Is that what the Silent Sisters did?
“Utha, wait!” Fiona called out.
The dwarf quickly jumped to one side as the elven mage stepped forward, holding her hands out in front of her. With a look of concentration and a whisper of magic, a corona of flame surrounded her hands and then rushed out in a jet to burn the approaching darkspawn.
For a moment the cavern was lit up bright as day. The front darkspawn roared and writhed in agony as the fire engulfed them. The magical flames spread along the ground, sending up a cloud of black smoke that threatened to choke the passage. The darkspawn behind those in front were similarly burned, and hissed in rage, but continued to run forward despite their injuries. They leaped over their burning comrades, eager to reach Fiona before she could cast another spell at them.
Utha launched forward as soon as the path cleared. Her face remained serene as she met the first genlock that rushed at her. Planting one foot, she did a spinning kick that caught the short creature full in the face. Bones crunched under her leather boots and it staggered back.
Not pausing a second, the dwarf raced toward it. She grabbed the genlock’s crude metal pauldrons and vaulted over its head, not letting go, and when she landed on the other side she used the inertia to throw the creature over her and into three more not several feet away. The entire group went down in a tangled mess.
A tall, heavily armored hurlock hissed in fury and raised its blackened sword high to strike down at the dwarf. She dodged aside, the blade striking sparks on the stone, and then she sank low and swept her foot in a wide arc under the creature’s feet. It toppled easily. Calmly she leaped on top of it and struck with a rigidly straight hand—not a fist, Maric noted—at its throat. Her fingers dug deep into its withered neck with a sickening crunch, and it flailed uselessly and tried to knock Utha off.
She was already gone, leapfrogging from him onto the back of another. Before that one could even react, she had her arms locked around its head and with a great heave and a twist snapped its neck.
More darkspawn were rushing toward her now, and Maric watched in amazement as the dwarf dropped to the ground and began striking out with her feet and her hands. Each kick was precise and measured, each strike of her elbow or her palm was aimed for maximum impact, and yet she moved almost too quickly for Maric to follow. He’d never seen anyone fight like that, ever.
Finally, a hurlock successfully grabbed Utha’s robe from behind and hauled her back. She gritted her teeth and prepared to twist out of its grasp, but before she could do so, the grey warhound leaped on it from behind. Hafter growled angrily as he bit into the hurlock’s neck with his powerful jaws, pulling it off the dwarf completely. Black ichor flowed as the hound tossed the creature to the side.
A genlock ran at Hafter with a spear, but two arrows streaked from the shadows and sunk into its chest, sending it flying back. Kell appeared, pale eyes glaring angrily at the creature that had dared attack his hound. The hunter’s hood had fallen back, revealing a clean-shaven head decorated with elaborate black tattoos that Maric thought looked much like those worn by the Avvarian hill folk.
Kell quickly shouldered his bow and drew a flail from his belt. It was a mean-looking weapon, a spiked metal ball attached to a chain, and the man immediately began attacking several darkspawn that ran toward him. His strikes were careful, each swing flinging the spiked ball into a new opponent, where it landed with spectacular effect. Then the ball would be yanked out of the reeling creature and sent hurtling into a new one.
Hafter immediately leaped to Kell’s back, spinning in tandem with his master’s movements and snapping at any creature that got too close. One large hurlock tried to stab at him with a spear and the hound locked onto the creature’s arm and dragged it to the ground. He growled loudly and flung the hurlock about in his jaws, almost as if it were a rag doll.
“Maric!”
The shout from Duncan jarred his attention. More darkspawn had surged past Genevieve and the others, though the amount of carnage he could see from that direction told him that the warriors were doing their utmost to fight back toward them. Fiona pointed with her staff and sent blasts of magical energy firing into the surge of approaching darkspawn, but it barely slowed them down.
Duncan leaped at them. As the first hissing genlock charged with a battle-axe raised high, the young Grey Warden stabbed at its chest with his pair of daggers. The silverite blades slid through the corrupted black metal of the creature’s chest plate as if it were made of little more than soft fabric. Duncan’s body crashed into the genlock and knocked it down, with him still on top of it.
Another darkspawn spun around, its dead eyes focusing on Duncan as it sliced down with its axe. The lad jumped up agilely, avoiding the strike and letting it land instead on the head of the hapless genlock below. In the air, Duncan lashed out with the daggers at the new attacker, cutting a clean gash across its throat and sending ichor spraying.
Even as the young man landed again he was already spinning about low and cutting into the legs of creatures nearby. Maric noticed he went for the critical spots with those short blades, though whether it was his training or simply instinct he couldn’t tell. The daggers plunged into gaps in the darkspawn’s crude armor, slashing tendons and severing ankles. He stabbed at any back that was turned, barely pausing to see the creature go down as he turned to face the next.
“Fun, isn’t it?” Duncan laughed madly toward Maric as he scrambled over a tall hurlock and thrust a dagger deep into its eye. The creature roared in agony and teetered back into another crowd of darkspawn, taking the thief out of sight.
Maric had his own problems now as a pair of hurlocks charged him with spears. Their flesh on their bald heads looked almost rotted, he thought, withered and covered in suppurating sores. The large eyes were milky pale, filled with hate. The last time he had journeyed through the Deep Roads eight years before, he and Loghain and the others had almost died at the hands of darkspawn. They were surrounded and overwhelmed until a unit of deep-delving dwarves known as the Legion of the Dead had appeared. Would he be so lucky again this time? Somehow he doubted it.