"And--" Alistair begins to say when he sees the mage in the gardens, before he realizes that shouting that name in a crowd may not be wise, unless his strategy is to see if the Freemen and Orlesian nobility would be willing to put aside their differences and gang up on one man. That would be one way to solve things. But not a way Alistair would like, personally, so no go on the shouting.
He lets whatever he was going to say die after that one syllable and makes his way over bodily, pausing on the way to stoop down and steal a hand ax off a body. What should have been a smooth grab makes him lurch and nearly topple over. But he makes it back up straight on his feet without incident, and two steps later grabs a grizzled man by the shoulder to hold both of them steady while Alistair cuts his throat, and then. Then Anders.
"Are you all right?" Whatever Anders is doing, however important it is, Alistair puts a hand on his shoulder, too, because he is not all right. He has blood matted in his hair that's too thick and concentrated to be someone else's, and also blood staining one of his eyes, and--most problematic--blood streaking the watery fluid that's beginning to leak out of one of his ears. But he grins with minimal grimacing, because adrenaline, and because finding Anders means he's probably not going to keel over and die. "Did you see that statue?"
SABINE.
He's not looking for her. He's just--looking for her. But while doing other helpful things! Like swinging the flat side of a stolen ax at a spotty teenaged Freeman's exposed head hard enough to drop him for a while, if not permanently, or catching a panicked man in finery by the waist and swinging him around to redirect his panicked run in a direction that won't result in his immediate death. Je vous en prie.
Maybe Alistair should be looking for the Empress or the Grand Duke, but other people are already doing that. Probably. They might even already have been recovered; the tide has clearly turned, the surrenders are kicking in. They just haven't spready this far, yet, and now someone's lit the draperies in the corridors on fire as well. Maybe not even intentionally. All these mages--
He doesn't recognize her by her hair, because the fire's making everything firey. He knows her by her build now. (Progress.) There are already people--mages, possibly undoing their own damage--putting out the fire, so there's no dishonor in darting after her, pushing through people who are trying to go the opposite direction, around a corner and back into the thinning fray. Someone's trying to loot a bedroom. He doesn't care enough to stop them.
"Sabine," he calls after her when he's close, and then, immediately sheepishly fake-defensive: "I wasn't looking for you."
ANYONE ELSE.
Find him in the fighting, trying to tank without armor or a shield! Or afterwards, covered in blood and coughing from the smoke.
various.
"And--" Alistair begins to say when he sees the mage in the gardens, before he realizes that shouting that name in a crowd may not be wise, unless his strategy is to see if the Freemen and Orlesian nobility would be willing to put aside their differences and gang up on one man. That would be one way to solve things. But not a way Alistair would like, personally, so no go on the shouting.
He lets whatever he was going to say die after that one syllable and makes his way over bodily, pausing on the way to stoop down and steal a hand ax off a body. What should have been a smooth grab makes him lurch and nearly topple over. But he makes it back up straight on his feet without incident, and two steps later grabs a grizzled man by the shoulder to hold both of them steady while Alistair cuts his throat, and then. Then Anders.
"Are you all right?" Whatever Anders is doing, however important it is, Alistair puts a hand on his shoulder, too, because he is not all right. He has blood matted in his hair that's too thick and concentrated to be someone else's, and also blood staining one of his eyes, and--most problematic--blood streaking the watery fluid that's beginning to leak out of one of his ears. But he grins with minimal grimacing, because adrenaline, and because finding Anders means he's probably not going to keel over and die. "Did you see that statue?"
SABINE.
He's not looking for her. He's just--looking for her. But while doing other helpful things! Like swinging the flat side of a stolen ax at a spotty teenaged Freeman's exposed head hard enough to drop him for a while, if not permanently, or catching a panicked man in finery by the waist and swinging him around to redirect his panicked run in a direction that won't result in his immediate death. Je vous en prie.
Maybe Alistair should be looking for the Empress or the Grand Duke, but other people are already doing that. Probably. They might even already have been recovered; the tide has clearly turned, the surrenders are kicking in. They just haven't spready this far, yet, and now someone's lit the draperies in the corridors on fire as well. Maybe not even intentionally. All these mages--
He doesn't recognize her by her hair, because the fire's making everything firey. He knows her by her build now. (Progress.) There are already people--mages, possibly undoing their own damage--putting out the fire, so there's no dishonor in darting after her, pushing through people who are trying to go the opposite direction, around a corner and back into the thinning fray. Someone's trying to loot a bedroom. He doesn't care enough to stop them.
"Sabine," he calls after her when he's close, and then, immediately sheepishly fake-defensive: "I wasn't looking for you."
ANYONE ELSE.
Find him in the fighting, trying to tank without armor or a shield! Or afterwards, covered in blood and coughing from the smoke.