A Routine Operation
"I was thinking of that time at Broken Towers Redoubt," Vivian said. "When I thought I'd pull a fast one on the Forsworn and slide down the mountainside behind the fort instead of fighting my way up from road level."
Shahvee asked, "You were after something their Briarheart had? The one you told me lived in the top of the tower, in that old shrine to Dibella?"
"Yes. I'd been there before on other business. This time, it was one of Urag's books. I forget the title..."
Vivian's voice trailed off and her expression went blank. Shahvee silently damned herself for not cutting Vivian off at the beginning, or diverting her. Now they would have to go all the way to the end, and it didn't look like a happy one.
"Outside, there's a platform between the two towers...I always wondered why it was called Broken Tower Redoubt. Both the towers are pretty much intact...anyway, there's usually a lookout up there, keeping an eye on the road. It was a woman this time. She never saw me coming. Her job was to look in the opposite direction, and she took it seriously. Anyway, she leaned over the parapet and I just couldn't help myself. I sneaked up behind her and shouted her off the parapet. The shout must have hit her at an odd angle, because it knocked her almost straight up. She shot into the air, hung there for an instant, and then, of course, fell to her death on the road. Sixty feet at least. It must have been quick.
"But it wasn't instant. She had been spun around by the shout as well and I saw her face just as she began her final fall. She screamed. Of course. But the scream, and the expression on her face for the instant I could see it...it wasn't just terror. Something more. Anger. And despair. As if I had robbed her of some precious thing that she had wanted and dreamed of for a long time...snatched it from in front of her and thrown it into a fire.
"I couldn't stop to think about it just then, since her cry had alerted the whole fort. But they were confused by the way I had come, and I suppose they searched from the ground floor up. No one noticed the missing sentry on the top level, or connected her with the body crumpled in a pool of blood on the road. It was dark, and I don't think they even saw the body. Anyway, I had plenty of time to slip into the tower room, shoot the unsuspecting Briarheart dead with a poisoned arrow, and locate the book that Urag was after.
"When I came out again, the platform between the towers was still empty. I looked around for anything worth looting before I slipped over the back wall and escaped along the slope. Something glittered on a table. I went to take it, and saw it was an amulet of Mara. There was an open letter beside it, almost finished, that the sentry had been writing. Of course, I read it. It was a marriage proposal, a declaration of love, addressed to a Forsworn regular at this fort. From what she said in the letter, it seemed he was stationed in the cellars. She made jokes about it, from high to low, that sort of thing. The amulet was a present. The Forsworn don't use the amulets the same way the Nords of Skyrim do, of course, but they understand their symbolism. To her, the amulet was a simple love token, and she had been planning to give it to him with her letter, her marriage proposal.
"I took the letter and the amulet. Now at least I knew what I had robbed her of. Not just life. Everything that could make life worthwhile. It had been right there in front of her, so close she could touch it, and then I had taken it all away.
"I realized her lover must still be there, in the fort. Should I take the letter with me, or destroy it, and hope he was ignorant of its contents? But he must have known. She wrote as if he knew. So I had killed two people, not just one. Very soon, when the body on the road was noticed, there would be another scream, more despair. And this pain and loss would not end quickly but go on and on and on.
"I thought for a moment, and made my decision. And then I went back into the fort, through the door into the second tower. I fought my way down - they were taken by surprise, again, by me coming from the roof - all the way to the cellars. I don't know which one of them was her lover. But when I finally walked out onto the road that ran in front of the fort, there was not a single member of the garrison still living. At least that meant the lovers were together again, wherever the Forsworn go when they die. I hope it is a peaceful place, with flowers and sunlight, and no war at all, ever.
"I left the letter and the amulet by the broken body on the road. Perhaps someone who had known them was able to see that the two lovers were buried together. Or perhaps the wolves got to her first. I never knew which, and I never went back there again."