Last Battle
Disclaimer: Bethesda and ZeniMax have made something awesome. I just like to play in it.
Notes: If you've read anything else I've written, you may notice some slight discrepancies between what the universe gives us and my interpretation. Sometimes I make changes for better story-telling effect, and sometimes it's because I believe the in-game source may be considered unreliable and the "truth" may be somewhat different. I will use this ability to change things judiciously, but if that bothers you, read something else.
It was all over in a second; there was nothing she could do. One moment, she was waiting patiently for her turn to strike while her Thane jumped atop the dragon, sword raised – the next, he was on the ground, still as a rag doll.
She'd been rocking on her feet before, anticipating the worm's next move, but now Lydia froze. She didn't just become motionless; her skin went cold and her hand was clammy around the pommel of her own sword. Her view of the world shran down to the sight of him before her. On the ground, her Thane still didn't move. His body was twisted in what was clearly an unnatural position, turned at an angle that no human could make voluntarily.
He couldn't be dead. He couldn't.
He'd ended the Dragon War; he'd fought alongside Jarl Ulfric during the Civil War and restored Skyrim to the Nords; he'd stood up to the Thalmor. He'd climbed the Seven Thousand Steps and mastered the Way of the Voice.
Now he looked like a pile of beaten steel armor in the dirt.
The blast of fire was what caught her attention and jolted her back into her body. She dodged instinctively to her left, and it was lucky that she did, because the fire missed her by inches. Inside her armor, she felt the skin on her right hip blister. She tucked and rolled into the bracken and down the small caldera where they'd chosen to make their stand, holding her sword arm out from her body, praying she wouldn't get impaled, hoping she'd miss any trees.
She skidded down the hill in a loop, feet over her head, then came to a stop on her stomach, half under a fallen tree. Trying not to breathe, she lifted her head slightly to look around. Above her, she could hear the dragon breathing heavily, snorting. There was a longer rush of breath and the smell of rotten meat; her hip ached inside her cuirass, but she held still, her body half-hidden under a fallen tree. Everyone knew that dragons were attracted by motion.
She should crawl out. She should stand up against this monster. She should honor her Thane's memory by avenging him, but she knew she would lose, and the dragon would win. It would kill her and fly away and that would be the end of her.
Lydia lay face-first in the dirt for what felt like an hour, her cheeks red with shame. When she judged enough time had passed, she rolled over onto her back. Around her, the trees made dappled shadows in the afternoon sunlight.
What a beautiful day to die, she reflected.
It took her some time to make her way to her feet. Her Thane might have sometimes seemed invulnerable, but she was a human being and human beings got hurt. In fact, at this point, she felt like a bruise with legs; it felt like she'd sprained her left ankle, and her right hip still screamed as the padding under her armor shifted. She pulled off her helm and scanned the patches of sky she could see between the leaves above her.
No dragon. She couldn't even hear its wings beat above her, although perhaps the hiss of the hot springs drowned it out.
Slowly, painfully, she turned and walked up the caldera.
His body was still there. Where else had she thought it would be? There was no way out of this. He lay at that prone angle, head tilted back and body aimed pitifully at the sky, and she knew he'd never move again.
There was a wail inside her chest that was aching to get out, but running and hiding was bad enough. She would not cry.
It was impossible to believe that someone who'd done so many things had been felled by one lone dragon. He'd misjudged his jump, he'd fallen wrong, and that was it.
For all the killing she'd done – and she'd done a lot, especially since entering his service – Lydia had never stopped for too long to consider what it meant. She'd known, generally, that the honorable dead went to Sovngarde. She'd imagined most of her foes there, whether they were people she'd want to meet when she died or not, drinking mead and feasting and making merry, and she'd known that would await her too.
But somehow, the finality of this hit her too hard. He was still, in the sun, his sword far from his right hand, half down the slope.
She'd run when she should have fought, and she could never take that back. But she could mourn him the way he deserved. The sky was clear and the sun was halfway through its descent. Below her, the sandy dirt of Eastmarch was hard and unyielding; this was no place to dig a grave and she was in no position to try to build him a tomb.
It would have to be a cairn, then.
Her helm she dropped on the ground, along with her sword. She had her dagger, and hopefully that would be enough to protect her as she ran into trouble, although she was so weary that she didn't know how well she could defend herself should a strong enemy find her. Her shield still lay where it had fallen during the fight, and she thought for a moment about going to get it, but that seemed a waste of energy.
Lydia could feel sandy grit from her roll down the slope on her scalp, and the thought of finding a hot spring and getting in for a soak tugged at her, but there was work to do first.
Finding adequate stones was difficult; Eastmarch wasn't known for having large rocks available, but her Thane deserved better than to be left for the crows. The birds were circling already, black wings waving above her head. It gave her a sick feeling to consider their purpose.
Most of the stones she found were down quite a ways, in the wooded area where she'd fallen in her dive away from the dragon. Slowly – so very slowly – she rolled the biggest stones up the slope to her Thane and stacked them carefully around his body. It was a job to find enough large stones to encircle his tall frame, and finding a supply of smaller stones to create a wedge shape above him was a trial.
It was long past dark when she finally finished. Lydia had built the cairn around him without taking anything but his gold, which he wouldn't need anyway. She'd left him in his armor, arranged his arms at his sides, and made sure the stones were at least a foot above his body in every direction. Overhead, Masser glowed so brightly violet that she couldn't see a single star. She wanted to lie down in the dirt beside the tomb but around her, the geysers hissed and she thought she could hear the scuttling of a mudcrab.
Did they even have mudcrabs out here? She couldn't remember. She was too tired to think.
With the last of her strength, she took her Thane's sword from its place on the ground and drove it firmly into the top of the cairn, jogging it from side to side to make sure it didn't move. Inside her armor, she felt a trickle of blood make its way down her left shin as a scab from her tumble stretched and broke.
Her last task finished, she dropped to her knees. What was there left for her to do besides pray to the Divines that he have a safe journey to Sovngarde?
This was the last thought Lydia had before darkness overtook her.
…
The next thing she of which she was aware was sun, glaring down on her, and a thirst deep in her throat. She had been asleep, and now she was awake. It was a long moment before she realized how much her body hurt – every inch of her was on fire. When she dragged herself into a sitting position, it became clear from the position of the sun that the day was nearly half gone, and she'd been passed out in the sun, in her armor, for that whole time.
It was a miracle a saber cat hadn't come along and eaten her whole, like in the stories her mother had told her as a child.
Lydia took several long drinks from her water skin and looked around. Geysers hissed, and over another caldera, she could see what looked like a hunter's camp. Maybe they'd have some game she could buy to eat. First, though, she'd have to make sure she could walk.
Standing was the hardest part – with a murmured apology, she used the cairn to pull herself to standing, and took stock of all her limbs. Her left shin felt too big for her greaves and was sticky with half-dried blood. Her right hip burned with blisters from the barely-dodged dragon fire; her head was fuzzy inside from sleeping in the sun so long with so little water.
Still, she'd been worse.
After a long break, she gathered her sword and shield and jammed her helm back on her sweaty head, then made her way slowly down the outside edge of the caldera towards the hunter's camp she'd spied across the gassy hot springs of the hold. It was difficult going, with the ground shifting beneath her feet and the rocky terrain slick from hot water.
Early afternoon, she finally got close enough to the hunter's camp to see what awaited her.
Four hunters, all dead. They'd been bathing in the hot springs, from the look of it, and now the spring bubbled with a mixture of mineral water and blood. One of them had gotten to his bow, but the arrow he'd nocked still hung from the bow string; his head, however, was nowhere to be found.
This was her fault, Lydia reflected as she looked at the four corpses. These men and women would have lived if she hadn't ducked into the brush and saved her own skin. Even if she'd come back out and attacked again instead of hiding like a coward, perhaps she could have saved them.
First her Thane, and now these people: her failure was racking up quite the body count.
And there, sitting at the top of the tallest caldera yet: the dragon. Its scales were sleek grey in the bright afternoon sun, its claws red with blood. It cocked its head as she approached, an intelligent, curious expression on its ugly face, and Lydia felt her knees try to quake.
She drew her sword and readied her shield in her sweaty left hand. She couldn't take back her fear but she could take her revenge. She met the dragon's eyes, raised her shield and began to run, closing the distance between them.
"You'll die this day, dragon!"