MOD PLOT ↠ NONE TO RETURN

[faderifting]

WHO: All characters signed up to participate in the Battle of Ghislain
WHAT: The Inquisition regroups and heads home
WHEN: Covers the period immediately post-battle (11.28) through the journey back to Kirkwall (11.29-12.1)
WHERE: North of Montfort, Orlais, and on the road to Val Chevin
NOTES: This is Post #2, covering the immediate aftermath of the battle and the journey back to Kirkwall. It's a free-for-all. Post #1 covers the battle itself. More info on the OOC post.

The Inquisition and Orlesian armies eventually limp to a halt along the Imperial Highway north of Montfort, where wide fields and gentle hills offer clear lines of sight and a sparsely equipped fortress provides some shelter and fortification. It's a soundly strategic location—if Ghislain is lost, Montfort is the last major city between the invaders and Val Royeaux—but among the rank and file there may be too much chaos to appreciate it.

For the remainder of the day and well into the night, the fortress and surrounding land are a frenzy of activity. The wounded who were not left on the field must be triaged and tended to with limited supplies, while many healers and surgeons out of commission themselves and the remainder worked to the bone. Scouts, soldiers, and even support staff in sturdy enough condition to keep working may be tasked with assembling camp from the few remaining supplies, taking reports on known casualties or acquired intelligence, or further fortifying the new location. The Orlesian army sends one of its battered cavalry units toward Ghislain to attempt to provide some warning, and from the Inquisition's number a few patrols are sent back toward the battlefield or toward Ghislain, with stern orders not to re-engage, only to watch for signs of pursuit, and to direct any stragglers.

Those who remain in the fortress are in for a long, miserable night, with meager rations and makeshift bedding, if any of either, while the wind shifts directions and grows colder. By morning a number of the wounded have died, but attempts to build a pyre are hampered by the sudden swell of a storm that starts with freezing rain and then transitions to early and unpredicted thick, heavy snow.

For a few hours that morning the two armies attempt business as normal, but it soon becomes clear that the storm is getting stronger, and they risk being snowed in with more people than they can feed. Many, including the Inquisition's Gallows contingent, are ordered to disperse. Many crowd into wagons, with any transportable wounded receiving further attention en route and neighbors hunching close to preserve heat whether they like one another or not, while those able to do so follow on foot or horseback over the rough, flash-frozen highway toward Montfort and then west toward Val Chevin. The storm doesn't abate until they've nearly reached the city, but once there they're able to stop, eat, and spend a few hours indoors thawing out before proceeding home.

Comments

[elegiaque]

“The body had to be moved from the healing tents.”

—ah.

She breathes out.

[coquettish_trees]

The body. Not ‘my father’, or even ‘he’. Alexandrie nods slowly, even though she can’t be seen doing it, and breathes out herself. Waits to see if Gwen will continue on or stop there as her fingers continue their weave in silence.

[elegiaque]

“He never intended to walk away from this.”

She takes her time with it, parceling out these thoughts. Moments. A whole life of them, finished.

“He went straight to the front from the tourney, I had to go and...close up the house, and pack up anything not to be left for...” fucking Celene she does not say, surrounded as they are by what's left of the Orlesian army. “It's just details now. It's finished.”

If she says it doesn't matter enough, it might become true.

(Didn't she tell Lexie the opposite? Nevermind; she gives better advice than she follows.)

[coquettish_trees]

She has never lost anyone close to her. She has never really lost anyone at all, not in a way such as this. Although Geneviève had gone away to become a Chevalier, they had still always written. Although Byerly had left Orlais, she had always assumed that somewhere he still lived—although she had preferred to not think of him at all.

But this... it does not seem the kind of thing that finishes so soon. Even if one has already gone to close places, pack things, close with the sort of firm decisive will that Gwenaëlle possesses that volume of ones life. Even thinking so, Alexandrie hardly means to speak it.

"You had not seen him, since then?" It is nearly conversational, as if she asked about someone besides a father that lay waiting for his pyre.