Chapter Text
Taleth woke gradually and somewhat unwillingly. Her body was sore and cold, her fingers twitching stiffly in the frigid air; the long rough tunic she wore did little to protect her from the biting wind. The world seemed to be jostling her, moving and bouncing now and then, and eventually she came to the realization that she was sitting upright but leaning against something; her right cheek and shoulder were pressed against something hard but warm, at least comparatively.
She cracked her eyes open. Her vision was blurred, but there didn’t seem to be all that much to see. Trees, slowly passing by, and she was well familiar with those. It was a gray day, the sky full of dark clouds swollen with impending rain and indicating no reprieve from the cold.
She was in a wagon, pulled along by a plodding old horse, a man in familiar Imperial armor at the reins. After a moment she realized she wasn’t alone. Three men were in the wagon with her, a blond man in strange blue and brown armor she didn’t recognize, a dark-haired youth in rags similar to hers, and a man dressed in fine clothes and cloak, his hair dark and his mouth gagged. Taleth realized slowly that it was he she was leaning against, trying to share warmth, and she gingerly shifted off of him – if he noticed the movement, or her existence at all, he gave no sign, staring straight ahead with his brow furrowed and his jaw set. She raised her hands to push her short hair from her face and determined that her wrists were bound together with rough rope. Her companions, she noticed, were similarly tied. Another wagon followed behind theirs, filled with passengers, many in the same armor the blond man wore.
The blond man took note of her first. “Finally awake?” he asked politely enough, his accent immediately identifying him as a Nord.
“Where,” Taleth croaked and winced, her aching throat rebelling the attempt at speech. She swallowed and cleared her throat and tried again. “Where are we…?”
“Skyrim,” the man told her, and that made sense. “You were trying to cross the border, right?”
Taleth nodded her affirmative and tried to recall how she had wound up bound in a wagon. She had indeed been attempting to leave Cyrodiil for Skyrim, no easy journey, but her trek had not been idle. She’d been hired to transport a particularly valuable – and perhaps not entirely legal – package from a merchant in Cyrodiil to his customers in Skyrim.
Evidently, the job had not gone quite as she’d planned, though the details were somewhat vague in her mind.
The man must have seen the lack of comprehension on her face and decided to elaborate a little. “You walked right into an Imperial ambush, same as us,” he explained, and Taleth did indeed recall the attack. She had encountered some men on the road not far from the border, but the passing had been amicable enough; she was going her way and they were going theirs and neither party had any interest in interacting with the other. Combat had begun quite suddenly when the Imperials had appeared, and perhaps if she’d been a little faster on the road she wouldn’t have gotten involved at all. She bit back a grimace at the memory and glanced down at her laps, eyeing what little she could see of the bruising on her thighs.
Perhaps if she’d been a little faster.
“And that thief over there,” the blond man added, looking toward the dark-haired young man in rags. The youth glared at him, twisting his wrists slowly under the rope as though hoping he could wear them down until he was free.
“Damn you Stormcloaks,” the young man spat. “Skyrim was fine until you came along. Empire was nice and lazy. If they hadn’t been looking for you I could have stolen that horse and been halfway to Hammerfell. You.” He directed his attention squarely on Taleth now, distracting her from her halfhearted efforts to make sense of what he was talking about. “You and me, we shouldn’t be here – it’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants.”
Taleth didn’t quite appreciate the apparent attempt at camaraderie. “I don’t even know what a Stormcloak is,” she said, flexing her bare toes slowly, trying to work some feeling back into her feet.
“We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief,” the blond man interjected grimly.
“Shut up back there!” the man driving the wagon snapped, and was paid no heed.
“And what’s wrong with him, huh?” the thief asked, nodding toward the gagged man, who merely stared at him. Taleth glanced the man over thoughtfully and shared in the curiosity, wondering why he alone had had his mouth covered. Perhaps he was a biter?
The blond man was harsh now. “Watch your tongue,” he snapped. “You’re speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King.”
That didn’t explain much, as far as Taleth was concerned, but then she’d never heard of the man in her life. Were the Stormcloaks a family, then? She tried to see any resemblance between the blond man and this Ulfric, but they didn’t look a thing alike. The significance was lost to her.
But not to the thief, who was suddenly looking quite terrified.
“Ulfric? Jarl of Windhelm?” he questioned. “You’re the leader of the rebellion. But if they’ve captured you… oh gods, where are they taking us?”
“I don’t know where we’re going,” the blond man said, calming once again, sounding resigned. “But Sovngarde awaits.”
Taleth didn’t know what that meant, but a rebellion certainly sounded interesting. She eyed the man beside her with new intrigue. In truth she knew very little of Skyrim or her customs; she had never been prior to taking on her last, most fateful job, and had never really been interested in going. By all accounts the place was cold and harsh, and that wasn’t the sort of place Taleth liked. The job had offered too much money to turn down – surviving wasn’t cheap, especially the way Taleth did it – but for a moment or two she’d begun to regret taking it on. But perhaps there was adventure to be had here in the unforgiving land of Skyrim.
If she survived long enough to find it.
The thief, she noticed when she emerged from her contemplation, seemed to be struggling with panic, a far cry from the defiant young man he’d been just a moment before. He looked like just a boy now, wide-eyed and frightened. “No, this can’t be happening,” he was protesting softly. “This isn’t happening.”
“Hey,” the blond man interrupted, his voice soft now. “What village are you from, horse thief?”
The thief looked at him reluctantly. “Why do you care?”
“A Nords’ last thoughts should be of home,” the blond man told him, and that, Taleth found, was rather disquieting. She wasn’t a Nord, and she couldn’t think of a specific place she might have called ‘home’.
“R-Rorikstead,” the thief said, naming a place Taleth had never heard of. “I… I’m from Rorikstead.”
“General Tullius, sir!” the driver called out, startling Taleth into looking around. As they passed through the gates of a city she noticed a gray-haired man in a group sitting astride hefty horses. Much of the group consisted of soldiers and the odd Altmer, but the man in his fine armor quickly drew the eye. “The Headsman is waiting!”
“Good,” the man, General Tullius, said as he guided his horse to join the procession. “Let’s get this over with.”
The thief had his head in his hands now, shaking and muttering what sounded like a chant but what Taleth eventually recognized to be the names of the Divines. “Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh. Divines, please help me…”
“Look at him,” the blond Nord spat over the terrified boys’ whimpering. “General Tullius, the Military Governor. And it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn elves.” Taleth quietly assumed present company was excluded. “I bet they had something to do with this.”
She looked at the group of Altmer and wondered what they could have had to do with the ambush. Perhaps they were connected to the rebellion in some way? She knew too little about the Thalmor to make any sort of properly educated guess.
The blond sighed and leaned back against the side of the wagon, looking to the town they were passing through. “This is Helgen,” he said, for the apparent benefit of no one except, perhaps, Taleth. Certainly the True High King would know where they were, and the trembling thief wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention. But then, perhaps the blond man was merely talking to himself. “I used to be sweet on a girl from here. I wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with the juniper berries mixed in. Funny,” he added, though he didn’t sound at all amused, “when I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe…”
The townspeople were gradually gathering as the wagons made their way along the dirt road, interested in the proceedings while children were shuffled into their houses. Taleth couldn’t say she truly appreciated being viewed like a side show freak, but there wasn’t time to properly contemplate that (or work up a suitable snarl for the onlookers) before the wagons came to a stop near a stone wall and a worn old tower. They were jostled as the horses stopped and the horse thief lifted his head, his face bled of any color, hands shaking violently in their bonds now.
“W-Why are we stopping?”
“Why do you think?” the blond man asked. “End of the line.”
The people in the other wagon were being made to stand and get down to the street. The blond man and the True High King stood before they could be handled by the Imperials.
“Let’s go,” the blond said, and Taleth stood with him. “Shouldn’t keep the gods waiting for us.”
The thief started to snap at the seams. “No! Wait! We’re not rebels!” he cried, pulling from the Imperial who came to drag him from the wagon.
“Face your death with some courage, thief,” the blond advised, stepping down easily. Taleth had to hop the distance, moving to stand beside him, where the struggling thief had been pulled.
“You’ve got to tell them we weren’t with you!” he pleaded, twisting to look at the blond, then at the True High King, who was still staring ahead with that sternly passive look on his face. “This is a mistake!”
A woman in Imperial armor stood before them with a dark-haired man bearing a sheet of parchment. Her hands were fisted at her hips and she regarded the crowd before her with unveiled disgust, ignoring the thief’s cries of protest. “Step toward the block when we call your name, one at a time!” she barked.
The blond didn’t seem impressed, heaving a weary sigh. “Empire loves their damned lists,” he remarked, and Taleth tried not to smirk at the blatant disdain.
The man didn’t need to refer to his parchment to know the first of the prisoners. “Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm,” he said, and the True High King moved without protest toward the chopping block to stand with his men from the other wagon who had already been called.
“Ralof of Riverwood,” the man read, and the blond man moved from Taleth’s side. She watched the two stare each other down with a hostility typically reserved for the truly and deeply loathed, but didn’t have time to consider the implications before the next name was called.
“Lokir of Rorikstead.”
“No!” the thief exploded, ripping from his guards hands. “I’m not a rebel! You can’t do this!” He burst into a sprint, ignoring the woman’s call to halt, fleeing back the way they’d come. Taleth watched, unflinchingly and without surprise, when he was immediately shot down by Imperial archers. His body hit the ground with finality and he didn’t rise again.
“Anyone else feel like running?” the woman invited, gesturing toward the example a few yards behind her. No one made a move.
“Wait.” The dark-haired man was looking at Taleth, his confusion evident. “You there, step forward. Who are you?”
Taleth obeyed, tossing her asymmetrically-cut black hair from her face as she moved to stand in front of him. She was still dirty but didn’t mind that; it had been a long time since she’d been truly clean, and that hadn’t been a problem for her. Twisting her wrists idly against each other, she saw no reason not to answer his question. Perhaps he would find she wasn’t there on his list of rebels. “Taleth,” she said.
“Strange for a Wood Elf to be entering Skyrim alone,” the man observed, but his tone wasn’t harsh, or even suspicious. He looked from her to the woman beside him. “Captain, what should we do? She’s not on the list.”
“Forget the list,” the captain said impatiently. “She goes to the block.”
So much for that.
“By your orders, Captain,” the man said respectfully, though he looked reluctant when he turned back to Taleth. “I’m sorry,” he said, and may have even sounded sincere. “I’ll see to it that your remains are returned to Valenwood.” He gestured with his list for her to join her apparent companions by the block.
Taleth snorted, her breath clouding in front of her. “I’ve never even been to Valenwood,” she retorted, and followed the captain without further protest. There was a space empty beside the blond man – Ralof, his name was Ralof, she at least wanted to know the name of one person in this bloody country before she died – and she moved to fill it without comment. He didn’t look at her, his attention focused on the True High King, who was being addressed by the Military Governor.
“Ulfric Stormcloak. Some here in Helgen call you a hero,” the man was saying. “But a hero doesn’t use a power like the Voice to murder his king and usurp his throne.”
Taleth thought she would have greatly liked to hear the story behind that particular accusation. He’d used his voice to kill a man?
Wulfric, his mouth still bound, merely grunted in reply.
“You started this war,” the General was saying, “plunged Skyrim into chaos, and now the Empire is going to put you down, and restore the peace.”
Uldred may have grunted again, but the sound was drowned out by something strange. It was distant, echoing through the forested mountains surrounding the town, but it sounded… powerful. Taleth glanced toward the sky.
The dark-haired list reader seemed to have noticed it, as well. “What was that?” he wondered aloud, casting his gaze upward.
“It’s nothing.” The General, apparently finished with his spiel, backed away to where he would undoubtedly observe the proceedings. “Carry on.”
“Yes, General Tullius,” the captain said importantly, and turned to a woman dressed in brown robes and hood. Taleth recognized a priestess when she saw one and wasn’t entirely enthused by the sight. “Give them their last rites.”
“Great,” Taleth sighed, raising her hands to rub the side of her nose. Ralof smiled thinly beside her.
“As we commend your souls to Aetherius,” the priestess began what promised to be a lengthy speech, “blessings of the Eight Divines upon you, for you are the salt and earth of Nirn, our beloved -”
Taleth was already exhausted, but one of the prisoners was evidently even more fed up than she was.
“For the love of Talos.” He broke from the line to approach the block without being led, loudly interrupting the rites. “Shut up, and let’s get this over with.”
The priestess seemed more indignant than surprised, gathering her robes around herself. “As you wish,” she said stiffly, and with a straight back left the execution site.
“Come on, I haven’t got all morning.” The prisoner got to his knees in front of the block and laid his head down without a trace of fear. “My Ancestors are smiling at me, Imperials. Can you say the same?” he asked snidely, before the headsman raised his heavy ax and silenced the man for good.
“Imperial bastards!” one of the prisoners cried through the chorus of cheers from the townspeople demanding justice be done. Taleth wondered where among these people shouting for the deaths of the Stormcloaks were the ones hailing the True High King as hero. Just then, they weren’t making themselves evident.
“As fearless in death as he was in life,” Ralof said solemnly of the beheaded man, whose body was being moved aside by the Imperials.
“Next, the Wood Elf,” the captain declared, and before Taleth could really wonder how she could have wound up second on the list (first, if one didn’t count the volunteer who had gone before her), the distant sound was echoing again. Except it wasn’t quite so far away this time. Taleth cocked her head to try and listen better.
“There it is again.” The list reader rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, alarmed as he searched the sky. “Did you hear that?”
The captain stubbornly ignored him. “I said, next prisoner!”
Apparently not wanting to seem jumpy in front of his superior, the list reader turned to Taleth, though he didn’t take his hand from his sword. “To the block, prisoner. Nice and easy,” he coaxed gently, as though speaking to a frightened animal.
Taleth arched an eyebrow at him before advancing, laying her eyes fully on the headsman’s block for the first time. It was badly notched from so many ax-swings and thoroughly stained with blood from so many prisoners, but Taleth didn’t fear the foreboding sight of it. She walked with her back straight, glancing toward the sky once more before she let the captain shove her to her knees.
The dead man’s head was still in the basket, and Taleth turned her head to the side as she rested it on the block. She watched as the headsman began to raise his ax, lifting it above his head to the chorus of another long sound, a moan that rang through the air. Before the headsman could land the final blow, something appeared behind him, something that flew through the air and let out another screaming wail that widened Taleths’ eyes.
“What in Oblivion is that?” the General yelled as the creature came fully into view. It was massive and black as ink, covered in long, sharp spikes, and when the beast came to land
on top of the tower it shook the ground with enough force to knock the headsman off his feet, making him drop his ax. Taleth braced herself against the chopping block and lifted
her head, watching as the creature opened its’ mouth to reveal rows of sharp white teeth as long as her arm.
The dragon reared its’ head back to roar again, but instead of any sound it released a wave of energy that hit Taleth like a physical force, knocking her backwards to the ground.
Her vision swam and blurred, her ears popping painfully as the clouds themselves above her were affected by the horrible magic; the clear sky was immediately overtaken with swirling blackness.
Taleth rolled onto her side and tried to get her bearings, pressing her hands to her forehead, her cheek close to the ground. There was movement nearby and someone grabbed her shoulders, dragging her to sit upright. She saw blurred yellows and blues and browns, and someone seemed to be shouting, but she couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps she’d gone deaf.
The mess of colors shook her and she blinked as her senses slowly returned.
“Hey, elf, get up!” the voice was dim but commanding as she was shaken again. “Come on, the gods won’t give us another chance!”
She blinked again and gripped hard fabric as she was pulled to her feet. Gradually she recognized that it was Ralof doing the manhandling.
“This way!” he told her, pointing toward the tower. He didn’t wait for her to regain her footing, half-helping, half-carrying her across the courtyard. Something was on fire nearby and people were screaming. The Imperials and Stormcloaks had both apparently scattered, but Taleth couldn’t lend much energy to wondering where they’d gone.
One of Ralof’s fellows was waiting for them by the door and slammed it shut as soon as they were inside. Ralof let go of her and inertia sent Taleth stumbling forward; she was halfway across the room before she managed to drunkenly redirect herself and purposely collided with the cold, rounded wall to help steady her as she looked around.
Several of the Stormcloaks were here, one of them tending a man who had apparently been wounded in all the chaos. A staircase hugged the walls, though Taleth didn’t know where it led; the tower hadn’t looked very tall or important from the outside.
She looked back to Ralof as he finished undoing the gag on the True High King. “Jarl Ulfric, what is that thing?” he asked. “Could the legends be true?”
Yulfric stretched his jaw and rubbed it. Taleth shifted along the wall to a narrow slit in the wall that served as a window and peered outside. Any buildings in sight had already been destroyed, chunks torn out by vicious claws and the surviving bits left to burn. A dark shadow passed by from overhead as she watched.
“Legends don’t burn down villages,” Ulfro said in a low, grim tone, his voice rough from lack of use.
Another roar shook the tower, sending dust and dirt raining from the walls and ceiling.
“We need to move. Now!” Bullfrog commanded with authoritative urgency.
“Up through the tower. Let’s go!” Ralof beckoned to Taleth and she wasted no time, stumbling a step or two before bursting into a run for the stairs. They didn’t get far up, finding the way blocked by a collapsed chunk of ceiling, which certainly didn’t do much for Taleth’s confidence in the place as a suitable shelter. Two Stormcloak men were working to clear the mess.
“We just need to move - “ one of them began, but never got to finish as the wall only a few feet in front of Taleth exploded inward, hunks of stone flying. Taleth raised her arms to protect herself and retreated blindly, Ralof catching her behind the shoulders to prevent her falling backwards down the stairs. He swore and she looked up to find the black dragon’s head in the hole, seconds before it unleashed another roar. This one was different, however. This one was accompanied by a torrent of flame that engulfed the unfortunate Stormcloaks, the heat burning Taleth’s face and exposed limbs. This one, as impossible as it was, Taleth thought she understood.
Yol Toar Shul!
The dragon pulled back once the two men were dead and flew from the tower. Taleth caught her breath and proceeded the last few steps, the scorched ground hot under her bare feet, cold air rushing back to to soothe her heated skin.
“What in all of…?”
“Damn.” Ralof went to the hole in the wall gripped the side of it as he looked out. He looked back to his companions, then to Taleth, and seemed to make a decision. “See that inn on the other side?”
Taleth shook off her confusion and went to join him, looking to where he was pointing. The structure could hardly be called an inn anymore, little more than the skeletal remains of a building, but she nodded anyway.
“Jump through the roof and keep going,” Ralof told her, and scowled when she didn’t immediately obey. “Go! We’ll follow when we can!”
Taleth regarded him and his armor; apparently he didn’t trust his or his companions’ ability to make the jump from here to the inn. He was already heading back down to regroup with his men, and Taleth was left at the hole in the wall, judging the open space between her and the fragile safety of a still-burning building.
She stepped up into the hole and jumped, her nimble frame lending itself easily to such a move, and she didn’t stop when she landed. The floorboards cracked threateningly beneath her feet and she kept going, running through what had once probably been a bedroom, through the charred remains of a door frame and into another room, where a hole in the floor granted her access to the ground. She dropped down and redirected herself when she heard the sound of voices outside. Twisting to fit in the space where part of the wall had fallen out, Taleth jerked to a stop once she was out of the building.
An Imperial soldier was nearby, trying to coax one of the village boys to him while another soldier tried to push the boy along. She recognized the first as the list reader but didn’t have time to identify the other as the dragon suddenly came down to land, crushing the man under it’s heavy body.
“Gods!” The list reader grabbed the boy and pulled him into shelter, where another village man was hiding. “Everyone get -”
Yol Toar Shul!
Taleth ran to join the Imperial, ducking into shelter to avoid the renewed burst of flame from the dragon. The Imperial noticed her and, instead of running her through with his sword then and there as she’d half-expected, grabbed her arm and pulled her further into cover.
“Still alive, prisoner?” he said, panting for breath. “Keep close to me if you want to stay that way. Gunnar,” he turned to the village man, who the sobbing child was clinging to,
“take care of the boy. I have to find General Tullius and join the defense.”
“Gods guide you, Hadvar,” the man said, and Taleth followed the Imperial from their shelter, running along the road toward where the dragon had been. He led her down a narrow path between a building and a high wall, beyond which Taleth knew was the headsman’s block and the tower. She wondered briefly if the Stormcloaks had managed to escape.
“Stay close to the wall!” the man called Hadvar said, pressing against it himself just before the dragon came to land atop the wall. Taleth stopped short of running into a leathery black wing, eyeing the tiny slivers of veins she could see coursing below the flesh as the dragon let out another ferocious roar before taking flight again.
“Quickly, follow me!”
She let out a breath and ran after Hadvar again.
They came upon a large yard where the Imperials seemed to have gathered; archers were on the roof of a building trying to take down the flying beast while soldiers waited for it to land, swords drawn and ready. Hadvar didn’t stop to join them, leading Taleth through an archway into a separate courtyard in front of what she assumed from the banners to be the town’s military keep, though she hadn’t expected Helgen to be big enough to warrant such a place.
“It’s you and me, prisoner,” Hadvar said as he headed for the keep. “Stay close!”
Taleth was distracted from her musings when a man appeared through a massive crack in the courtyard wall. Ralof was alone, blood trickling from his hairline, and he looked angry.
“Ralof!” Hadvar shouted. “You damned traitor. Out of my way!”
“We’re escaping, Hadvar! You’re not stopping us this time,” Ralof told him.
“Fine. I hope that dragon takes you all to Sovngarde. Come with me, prisoner,” Hadvar said to Taleth, and ran for the keep.
“You, come on!” Ralof called to her, heading for a different door. “Into the keep!”
Taleth looked back and forth between the two men, Imperial and Stormcloak, and it didn’t take her long to reach a decision. Ralof may have been a rebel, an apparent traitor to the Empire, but he had risked his life to save hers when the Imperials – and Hadvar, who called her ‘prisoner’ despite knowing her name – had abandoned her.
Besides, when had she ever been loyal to the Empire?
She ran after Ralof and ducked through the door he was holding open for her. He followed her in and let the door shut with a heavy slam.
The sudden silence was nearly deafening. Taleth caught her breath as she looked around. The room was empty save for a single table and chair; a single Stormcloak soldier had apparently managed to get there before them but had died before they arrived, lying on the floor in a pool of blood.
“Damn it…” Ralof approached the woman, checking for signs of life. He sighed. “We’ll meet again in Sovngarde, sister,” he said, and stood, turning back to Taleth. “Looks like we’re the only ones who made it.”
“What happened to… the others?” Taleth asked, smoothing over the pause to hide the fact that she didn’t recall anyone’s’ name.
“We got separated. If it’s not Imperials trying to kill you it’s a damn dragon.” He shook his head, still in disbelief as he rubbed a hand over his face. “That thing was a dragon,” he said, as if trying to convince himself. “No doubt about it. Just like in the childrens’ stories and legends. The harbingers of the End Times.”
That didn’t sound promising. Taleth glanced toward the ceiling as a muffled roar reached her ears.
“We’d better get moving. Come here. Let me see if I can get those bindings off.”
Taleth approached him and held out her wrists. There was a small dagger on the table and Ralof used it to cut through her bindings, making short work of the thin ropes.
“There,” he said as she rubbed her sore wrists. “Might as well take Gunjor’s gear. She won’t be needing it anymore.”
Taleth looked to the woman on the floor and nodded; she was a Nord and a bit bigger than Taleth, but there wasn’t much of an option. Her tunic wouldn’t protect her. So she knelt and removed the woman’s armor as respectfully as she could, given that she appeared to be a friend of Ralofs’ and he was standing in the room. She donned the armor, frowning at the wrong fit, trying to adjust it as best as she could. She didn’t bother with the fur boots, they were much too big and would likely slip right off anyway. Gunjar had a small ax on her, the sort of weapon Taleth had never favored, but she experimentally gave it a swing as Ralof looked for a way out of the room they were in.
There were two sets of barred doors. Ralof cursed as he tested the first one. “This one’s locked,” he said, turning to the second. “Let’s see about that gate.”
Taleth crossed the room with him, eyeing the gate as she did.
“No way to open this from our side,” Ralof said after a moments’ inspection, then paused at the sound of voices coming from the end of the long hall beyond the gate.
“Come on, soldiers! Keep moving!”
Taleth recognized the voice of the woman captain and immediately ducked to the side of the gate, crouching against the wall. Ralof did the same on the other side, drawing his dagger in preparation.
“Get this gate open,” the captain ordered. With a rusty sort of clanking the gate began to lower into the floor and Taleth gripped her ax, watching raptly as the captain and her two soldiers spilled into the room. Without hesitating she moved from hiding, raising her ax and burying it in the shoulder of the captain, the sharp blade splitting the leather easily and earning a scream of pain.
Ralof moved beside her and slit the throat of the nearest soldier before he had his sword drawn. Taleth wrenched her ax from the captain’s back and kicked the woman to the floor before bringing the ax down again on the back of her neck, splitting her head almost entirely from her body.
“Heh,” Taleth huffed. “Oh how the tables have turned.”
She looked up to find Ralof holding the remaining soldier in a choke hold, though the position wasn’t held for long before the crack of a snapped neck sounded through the room. Ralof dropped the body and stepped back, wiping a smear of blood from a small cut in his arm.
“Maybe one of these Imperials has the key,” he said. Taleth was already in the act of searching the captain, though she first busied herself with removing the woman’s sword from her belt and strapping it to her own. She took another sword from a fallen soldier and let Ralof have her ax. The captain also had a small purse of coin, which Taleth took without hesitation, before she found a ring of keys.
“Here.” She was still exhausted and starved – she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten – but the atmosphere of combat managed to energize her somewhat. She was already feeling more optimistic, despite the dragon still raging outside.
“Unlock that door and let’s get out of here.”
Taleth moved to obey, testing two of the keys before she found the one that opened the gate.
“Let’s get out of here before that dragon brings the whole tower down on our heads,” Ralof said, an instant before another distant roar shook the sturdy walls of the keep. Taleth gave him a look that was somewhere between a grimace and a grin before following him out into a wide corridor that became a staircase curving downward into the ground.
They moved quickly, racing down the stairs and into a small, empty room that led out into another corridor. A group of figures in armor stood several yards away, and in the gloom Taleth couldn’t tell if they were Stormcloak or Imperial; she put a hand on the sword at her belt either way. Before a move could be made, however, the ground beneath her feet began to shake and the roof above them caved in suddenly.
“Look out!” Ralof dragged her backward and out of the way of the falling stones, another roar from the dragon echoing in her ears, somehow closer now.
Once the cave-in settled Ralof approached to see if he could find a way through, shaking his head with a frown. “Damn, that dragon doesn’t give up easy,” he grunted. Taleth looked around and noticed a door to her left.
Almost at the same moment a voice reached her through the wood.
“Grab everything important and let’s move! Dragon’s burning everything to the ground!”
Taleth opened the door and found an apparent store room for the keep. Several shelves were stocked with dishware, or had been; most everything had been knocked to the ground in the chaos. Bottles of wine, most shattered but some still intact, littered the floor. A group of men were at the other side of the room, searching through barrels and crates for supplies, all dressed in Imperial armor.
“Hey!” one of the men exclaimed when he noticed them. Taleth didn’t give him the chance to say anything else, drawing her swords and immediately charging the men. The first was cut down instantly, a sword buried in his chest, but the second was able to draw his sword and defend himself. She struck at him with her free blade, the other one still stuck in the first man’s chest, and the Imperial fought well until a flying dagger stabbed him in the eye, sending him screaming and reeling backward. Taleth finished him with a violent slash across the chest and in the blessed silence turned to kick the first man off her blade.
“A store room,” Ralof noted as he joined her. He quickly set to looting the bodies for their swords and she took the dagger from the dead man’s eye, cleaning the gore off on his shirt. “See if you can find any potions,” he told her. “We’ll need them.”
Taleth sheathed her blades and went to the barrels the men had been searching through. She quickly found a small collection of potion bottles, red and blue and green, as well as leftover food; mostly vegetables but there were loaves of bread, as well. She took one of the loaves and tore it in two, giving the larger half to Ralof (he was much bigger than she, after all) and stuffing her piece into her mouth. She’d intended to continue searching while she ate but the taste of food in her mouth distracted her from all other thought; she devoured the bread in an instant, and beside her Ralof did the same. The two shared a second loaf before she let herself get serious, collecting the health potions and tucking them carefully into her belt, where they would hopefully be safe until she could make better arrangements for carrying things. She picked up one of the intact wine bottles, as well, pulling the cork out with her teeth and taking a sniff; wine was wine, but she wasn’t familiar with the Nord stuff. She took a sip to test it, then swallowed two mouthfuls before passing it to Ralof, who drank gratefully.
“Let’s get going,” he said when they finished the bottle, and led the way to the door, which let them back into the corridor on the other side of the cave-in. The corridor led them further down and to a corner that angled to the right, and it wasn’t long before the sounds of battle reached their ears.
“Trolls blood,” Ralof said when they laid eyes upon the chamber they were entering. “It’s a torture room!”
The room was lined with cages, and an escaped Stormcloak was facing the torturer and his assistant herself, though she was already heavily injured. She didn’t last long enough for the unintentional reinforcements to provide any significant help; a jolt of lightning from the torturer’s wizened old hands had her on the ground, and his assistant brought his heavy warhammer to bear before Ralof or Taleth could intervene, swinging it down in a blow that crushed the Stormcloaks’ chest in a splatter of blood.
Ralof was a fearsome thing as he screamed in rage and launched himself at the men, sword and ax drawn and raised high.
The torturer seemed more annoyed than frightened when he turned to face the new opponent, another spell of lightning already crackling around his fingertips while his assistant hefted his hammer from the new corpse. Ralof had left himself wide open to attack and he was too far ahead for Taleth to defend him.
“Damn it…” She drew her dagger and threw it with none of Ralof’s precision or… any precision at all, for that matter; the blade turned over once in midair and smacked the man full in the face before clattering uselessly to the floor without inflicting the slightest bit of damage. It served to distract him, however. As he recoiled backward in pain and surprise Ralof took the opportunity, burying his ax in the man’s ribs and earning a scream of pain. He plunged his sword in the torturer’s left shoulder to stop the beginnings of the man’s next spell, then wrenched his ax free and swung it again into his side, steadily driving the old man to the floor.
Taleth paid only the barest attention to the scene as she approached, her attention focused on the dying torturers’ large assistant, who was nearing from the other side with that hammer of his. He lifted it to swing downward at Ralof’s exposed back and Taleth raised her swords in an x to catch the blow before it could land. The force of it sent a shock through her arms and nearly buckled her knees. She yelled in pain but gritted her teeth and shoved back. The assistant was clearly surprised to be met with any resistance at all, especially from a diminutive Wood Elf, but Taleth held him off for the few seconds it took Ralof to put an end to the torturer and figure out the position he was in. He pulled the ax from the dead man and twisted, swinging the curved blade into the assistant’s unprotected thigh. The man’s grip on his hammer shuddered as he dropped to one knee, a loud, strangled yell of pain escaping through his clenched jaw. Taleth twisted her swords and angled his hammer out of her way before kicking him in the face. The heavy man fell backward and Taleth vaulted over Ralof, straddling the assistant’s chest as she switched her grip on her swords and raised them high, plunging both blades into the prone man’s face.
“Oh.” She grimaced at the sight, letting her gaze drift toward the ceiling as she pulled her swords free. “I missed.”
“Missed?” Ralof questioned as he got to his feet. “Looks like you got him, to me.”
“I was aiming for the throat.” Taleth stood and backed up, rolling her shoulders. “I’m a bit out of practice,” she admitted.
Ralof stared at her, then at the body on the floor, and chose not to comment. They collected and cleaned their weapons and went about scouring the room for supplies. There was a dagger on a table, along with a knapsack that was empty save for a pouch of coins, and a book titled The Book of The Dragonborn that Taleth ignored. She took the dagger and relocated her potions from her belt to the knapsack before pulling it onto her back.
Ralof was settling the Stormcloak woman into a more dignified position. He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “Damn the Empire,” he muttered to himself. He stood when his respects were paid and turned back to Taleth. “It looks like there’s a way through here,” he said, indicating a narrow corridor in the corner.
She followed him down a line of empty cells built right into the rough stone walls; the floor was cold and sharp here and she wished she had shoes, but didn’t complain. Another turn led them down a flight of stairs and around a corner into a larger, grisly dungeon. Blood and bones scattered the floor and cages hung from the ceiling, some still containing the bodies of those recently dead, and some not so recent. Taleth avoided touching one of the caged skeletons as they passed, making their way to a hole in the wall that opened onto a cave in the earth. Large stones formed rough stairs they had to climb down, but Taleth was grateful for the dirt at the bottom, at least until she stepped on a thorn. Vines and roots grew all along the walls and floor and even the ceiling, some leafy, some thorny, but after her first encounter Taleth was careful to avoid all of them.
The path twisted and turned, dotted with torches that were already lit, and after only a few yards a stone pillar that certainly wasn’t natural came into sight. A little further along and the corridor opened up, the ceiling high and the walls smoother than they had been.
“Orders are to wait until General Tullius arrives.”
The voice came from around the next corner and Taleth and Ralof stopped in their tracks, glancing to each other. Taleth quietly drew her swords and eased closer to peer around the bend.
The chamber was huge, with holes high in the ceiling that let in pools of sunlight. A waterfall spilled down a wall to Taleth’s left and ran in a shallow river through the chamber, with earthen bridges and raised pathways arching over it.
“I’m not waiting around to be killed by some dragon!” another voice protested anxiously. “We should fall back!”
“Give the General more time!” the first voice insisted, and Taleth laid her eyes on the Imperial soldiers gathered throughout the chamber. There weren’t many, perhaps four, and Taleth didn’t hesitate, dropping into a crouch and running forward toward the nearest man, whose back was turned to the entrance.
One of the farther men noticed her first. “Stormcloaks!” he shouted, too late to save Taleth’s target, who started to turn and received a dagger in the throat in the process. She grabbed the man before he could fall – he gripped her arms and struggled to stand upright on his own, which was helpful – and dragged him close, using him as a shield against the arrow the farther man shot at her. Another soldier came at her from the right, sword drawn, but Ralof bull rushed him before he had a chance to attack and knocked him over the edge of the pathway to the river below.
An arrow whistled past Taleth’s ear and she looked around, quickly spying the fourth man at the other end of the chamber, already notching another arrow into place. She dropped her shield, pulling her dagger from his throat as he fell, and pointed to the nearer archer with the bloodied blade.
“You get that one,” she told Ralof before she ran to the edge of the pathway and hopped over, landing on the back of the fallen Imperial who was only just managing to push himself up, weighed down by his waterlogged armor. Her sudden weight dropped him again but she didn’t wait to see if it killed him – she sincerely doubted it – instead running on, crossing the lower area toward her target. He fired arrow after arrow at her and she evaded them, twisted to dodge or ducking briefly behind a high stone pillar. One bolt grazed her shoulder but that was the closest any of them got and she hardly noticed the wound. She ran on, right through the little river and to a short set of stairs carved into the stone, granting her access to the raised pathway again.
The archer dropped his bow at her rapid approach and drew his sword instead. He blocked her first attack, and her second, before she launched a vicious flurry of strikes he couldn’t hope to match; he deflected the first but the second stabbed into his side followed closely by a third, driving him backward toward the chamber wall. Taleth knocked the sword from his hand and slashed her blade across his throat, the gash splattering blood at her before he could grasp at it uselessly, and she kicked him back against the wall and let him fall to the floor. She dropped her swords and wasted no time in relieving the dead man of his quiver of arrows, strapping it across her back. She slipped her toes under the long, thin bow on the floor and kicked it up into the air, catching it in one hand and drawing an arrow with the other, sending the bolt flying back across the chamber to the Imperial in the river, who was staggering back to his feet, his face twisted in pain. The arrow took him in the chest and he fell backward again, clutching at the wound, before a swift second found home in his forehead and put an end to him.
“Out of practice,” Ralof observed from across the room, pulling his ax from the archer with an odd squelching noise.
“A year ago,” Taleth said, catching her breath, “I could have finished all four of them by myself.”
“I’m going to have to hear your story sometime, friend,” he said with a weak chuckle. He collected the bow and arrows from his target and came to meet Taleth as she gathered up her swords and cleaned the blades.
Another staircase at this end of the chamber led through an archway. “Let’s see if the way is clear,” Ralof said, though with the way their luck had been going, Taleth doubted it.
She followed him anyway along the short corridor, quickly finding the way blocked by a wall of wooden planks. A lever was in the floor and Ralof didn’t hesitate to pull it, and the wall fell away from them, forming a bridge across a short chasm in the ground.
A hole high above them bathed the bridge in sunlight, and when Taleth stepped out into it she felt the warmth and realized how much she was already missing the sun. Ahead of them she could see only more caves and caverns; what if they reached a dead end and couldn’t get back to the surface without backtracking all the way to the Helgen Keep? They’d likely be overtaken immediately by any lingering Imperials, if the dragon hadn’t already burned the entire place to the ground.
“Let’s keep moving,” Ralof said, and she nodded and crossed the bridge. He followed after her, and it seemed as soon as his boots touched solid ground the world around them began to shake. A distant roar echoed through the ceiling to them and Taleth turned to watch in disbelief as a boulder fell just behind them, shattering the bridge and their way back.
“Divines,” she muttered in frustration.
“No going back that way now,” Ralof said grimly, turning to look ahead of them. Another set of carved stone stairs led down to an earthen tunnel; another waterfall high in the wall let out here, a wide stream cutting through the ground.
“We’d better push on,” he said with a sigh. “Anyone else will have to find another way out.”
“And after the path of bodies we left for them to follow,” Taleth mused, heading down to the stream. They followed the water for several yards, into a narrow tunnel, and quickly came upon a wall of rocks and stones.
“That doesn’t go anywhere,” Ralof observed after investigating the wall for weaknesses. He looked around and nodded to the right, indicating a smaller side tunnel, leading into
darkness. “I guess we’d better try this way.”
“Great.” Taleth followed him, keeping one hand on his back and the other on the wall to avoid losing track of him in the dark. The tunnel didn’t go on for long before a pale light appeared at the end of it, and she could see the opening of another wide chamber, sunlight spilling through high cracks in the ceiling. Taleth paused before following Ralof into the chamber, however, when her fingertips found something sticky on the wall. “Uh.”
A nearby hissing cut off any warning she could have given as a spider the size of a dog came barreling down from the wall. Four more emerged from the darkness or descended from the ceiling on thick webs, which Taleth could barely see decorated the entire chamber.
She drew her swords and attacked the nearest creature, slashing across its’ eyes before attempting to stab, the spider scuttling away before she could deliver the strike. She ran after it, the sticky webbing on the floor clinging to her feet.
Ralof attacked with ax and sword, brutally taking down any of the spiders that came too close to him. One of the creatures reared up to spit venom, the fluid striking Taleth hard in the chest and splattering over her; she could already feel the icy poison seeping into her skin and attempting to freeze her muscles, but her bosmer blood reacted quickly to negate the effects before she could be overwhelmed.
“Gods, these things are disgusting,” she grunted, swinging her sword at a strong, hairy leg that attempted to grab at her and removing the twitching limb. The spider lunged, pincers ready, and Taleth planted one foot on it’s head, using the leverage to jump up onto the creatures back, crouching low when it twisted to try and throw her off. She drove her sword into the top of it’s head and jumped to the side when the thing raged in it’s final seconds of life before it collapsed to the ground.
Ralof struck down the last of them and stepped back, blood dribbling from two puncture marks in his upper arm. It wasn’t bleeding too badly and he didn’t seem concerned, so
Taleth didn’t comment.
“I hate those damn things,” he muttered while she cleaned the thick blood from her swords. “Too many eyes, you know?”
They continued out of the chamber; Taleth could feel the webs stuck to the bottoms of her feet collecting dirt with every step but there wasn’t time to try and clean them. They followed another tunnel downward, though it wasn’t more than a few yards before this opened into a wider cave. The stream let out through the wall here and continued through the cave, rushing quietly.
Taleth crossed a narrow bridge over the water and kept moving. Oddly a wooden cart came into view, lit by a burning torch and containing a single knapsack. Before she could go to investigate, however, Ralof suddenly grabbed her from behind and pulled her back away from the torch light.
“Hold up,” he whispered. “There’s a bear just ahead. See her?” He pointed past the torchlight and Taleth realized he was right; she could just barely make out the shape of the bear, sleeping peacefully in a pool of sunlight.
“I’d rather not tangle with her right now,” he said softly, and Taleth had to agree. Her fingertips still felt a lingering cold from the spider’s venom, and she knew they were both getting too fatigued to handle themselves against such a huge bear.
“Take it nice and slow,” Ralof whispered, and Taleth started forward on silent feet, crouched against the wall opposite the bear, deep in shadows. She moved slowly and quietly, aware of Ralof following behind with just as much care. They edged along the path past the bear, scared to breathe too loudly. The animal stirred once, groaning in her sleep before settling down again, and Taleth thought her lungs would burst.
But then they were clear. Taleth broke into a trot, glancing back once or twice, before she and Ralof ran for the tunnel that would lead them out of the bears’ cave. The tunnel twisted, angling up and then down in a nearly vertical decline before evening out again, and as Taleth turned a corner a sudden burst of cold air hit her in the face. A few yards ahead was the mouth of the cave, a narrow gash in the wall, heaps of snow piling in from outside.
“I knew we’d make it!” Ralof said, letting Taleth slip out ahead of him into the open air. The sky was bluer than she remembered, clear of clouds or hints of danger. The unfamiliar but pleasant smell of pine trees filled the air and Taleth’s lungs and suddenly she wasn’t so tired; she felt like she could run a mile.
“Hah!” she crowed at the sky. “So much for that, dragon! And you Imperials! You can all shove that headsman’s ax right up your collective -”
“Wait!” Ralof seized her again and dragged her to a boulder resting nearby, clutching her tightly as he crouched down. She started to protest before a distant roar – this one of triumph, rather than any manner of aggression – echoed through the air. A shadow crossed the ground a few feet away and she looked up, grimacing as her view of the sky was briefly blocked out by the passing dragon.
Fortunately it didn’t seem to have seen them. It flew off, heading for a jagged mountain in the distance.
Ralof let out a breath and released his hold on her. “There he goes. Looks like he’s gone for good this time.”
“Hopefully.” Taleth peered over the top of the boulder and watched between the trees as the dragon soared away.
Ralof grunted as he pushed himself back to his feet. “No way to know if anyone else made it out alive,” he said reluctantly. “But this place is going to be swarming with Imperials soon enough. We’d better clear out of here.” He started off down the path but Taleth lingered for a moment, watching the sky even though the dragon was long out of her range of sight.
She’d thought she’d understood the monster speaking before. Not any words she knew but words none the less, words that held a certain power. Her skin had tingled upon hearing them, right up to the tips of her ears.
What a strange place Skyrim was, to have talking dragons.
She considered on the choices she had laid out before her. She didn’t have much by the way of supplies, only a handful of coin – and no shoes! - so her immediate options were limited. She didn’t expect she was terribly far into Skyrim and could probably head back to Cyrodiil without incident, perhaps she could find a town and steal a horse and more supplies on the way, but the thought didn’t appeal to her. The package she’d been meant to deliver had been taken from her hands when the Imperials had captured her, and her failure would land her in terrible trouble with her employer; she wasn’t overly eager to return to that, and she was certain there was nowhere in Cyrodiil she could hide. Perhaps she’d be better off in Skyrim. She didn’t know anyone save the single outlaw on the path before her, she had no home, but she had an entire country to hide in and, for the time being, no one to answer to. Further down the path, oblivious Ralof was assuring her that he had a sister in a nearby village called Riverwood who would likely help them. He wasn’t
forcing her to go with him or do anything, and it was a refreshing change.
Her decision gladly made, Taleth trotted down the path after him, unbound, for the first time in her life.