(closed) ambushing the anders.

[levered]

WHO: Teren, Marcoulf, Helena, Clarke
WHAT: Cleaning up after a massacre
WHEN: Mid Harvestmere
WHERE: Orlais, near the front
NOTES: The aftermath of most vicious murder

It's a close thing, but it is, ultimately, definitely a thing: a dozen-odd Anders, scouting the terrain, dashed on and beneath rocks, and four Inquisition personnel looking down on them from the top of the ravine. The scene isn't as grisly as it sounded. People don't generally splatter. The blood seeping out around some of the bodies is slow to spread, mainly soaking into the dirt.

There's no satisfaction, on Clarke's end, in either a job well done or in fighting a war against someone else's enemy, but there is the mild satisfaction that always accompanies not being dead herself yet. She's eyeing them through the scope she salvaged from her busted rifle, counting how many might still be breathing, and nearly misses the more-than-just-a-twitch movement beyond her limited field of vision.

It's the least dead of them, one who'd rolled on impact and covered his head. He looks up at them first, seems satisfied by or at least helpless to do anything about the distance they would have to descend to reach them, begins to hobble in the direction he came from, and then pauses to turn back to his significantly more dead brothers in arms.

"I told you," he says, and whether he's a smug asshole or in some sort of shock, it's an opportunity for someone to assist nature and gravity along in making sure his head gets bashed in after all.

Comments

[esquive]

Well.

A moment of quiet, stillness at the bottom of the ravine. Then, with a dusting of the hands, Marcoulf climbs out from behind the thicket of dry branches and crumpling leaves that had more or less screened them from view of anyone who might have glanced up toward the top of the ravine. No need for that precaution, apparently.

With a hand to minding the sword at his hip, he promptly begins picking his way down the mud and shale to inspect their work.

[doneisdone]

Though it's tempting, Teren is momentarily content to allow Helena to do the shoving. The sound of impact is satisfying enough either way, and a decent signal to break cover so they can start looting. What is combat for, anyway? These are people's sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, but everyone dies eventually, and at least they got to do it with valor or whatever horseshit helps people sleep at night (sleeping at night is for cowards).

Slipping nimbly down the ravine, Teren pauses to spare a swift kick for someone still twitching, then bends to start patting him down for any useful missives or, like. Mints.

[levered]

Before following Marcoulf and Teren, Clarke pauses to give Helena a look stuck somewhere between bewildered and concerned at her tone. But what matters is that it's done. She trades the scope for a knife and arrives at the bottom not far behind Marcoulf, stepping carefully around a splayed arm.

None of them are standing up again anytime soon. At least one of them is still breathing, in a wet and rattling way, eyes unfocused on the sky above him. Clarke crouches and looks at the damage to his torso, as if maybe he might make it, maybe they're here to take prisoners—looks at it and then shushes him, unnecessarily, while she cuts his throat.

Emptying his pockets is fairly quick work, and splitting the useful from the bits of lint and yarn is simple, but the letters she holds up to whoever is close by.

"I can't read these," she says.

She's working on it, but now's not the time to practice.

[strangel]

She catches the look from Clarke, and offers her a smile, deliberately wide and unsettling, and follows the others climbing down the rocks hands first a short ways, and then dropping down into the dirt and shale in a crouch. The dust rises around her, and she moves the short distance to one of the bodies on all fours, pats down some pockets, and pulls out something rolled up in cloth. A pouch of tobacco and a pipe, and she unwraps it and sniffs.

The pipe is resting in her mouth as she arrives alongside Clarke. "That was very kind," she comments, before going to pat down the man's boots, and pulling out a vicious looking knife, with hook-like designs that seem to have filed into it. An expression of distaste, and she tosses it aside.

[esquive]

From over the neighboring corpse, Marcoulf make a sudden sharp wheezing sound. It's alarmingly abrupt - sounds a little like getting stabbed and being surprised about it might -, but already he is straightening, good humor full in his wan face. Some aborted laugh, apparently.

"Here. Try this instead," he says, passing a folded scrap of paper to Clarke. The contents, a rough and unquestionably denigrating drawing of the attachment's very dead commander, are much easier to parse.

Ha ha, we have fun here.

[doneisdone]

Giving a start at Marcoulf's sound, Teren shoots him a dirty look when it seems he wasn't in distress at all; and here she was ready to stab a motherfucker and everything. Wiping her hands on her pants to rid them of blood, she paces over to Clarke and plucks the missives from the girl's hand, beginning to scan them with narrowed eyes.

[strangel]

The Not French is funny when he laughs, like an old engine choking. She grins in response, and starts unfastening the buttons of one of the Ander soldier's uniform jackets, pulling it off and affording him little dignity in the process, as she shrugs it on, inhaling the scent of the uniform as she does. Sweat, tobacco, something oddly sweet that makes her start inspecting the pockets with more interest. The jacket is far too big for her, hangs off her shoulders, but she's Working It.

Aha. And the sweet smell was some caramels in wax paper, which she starts unceremoniously shovelling into her mouth. But Marcoulf laughed, so she sidles up next to him, and holds out the packet in offering (holding onto the base so he can take one, but not the whole packet. Not the whole packet, Marcoulf.)