The Soldier's Niece's Tale
I had arrived in Dawnstar almost by accident, the only reason being that it was the closest port to Castle Volkihar. I had resolved to leave there at once after reading the manuscript Serana had given me, but as usual I had second thoughts, and ended up staying for nearly two weeks. Dashing off to some other place would solve nothing. It would only remind me of how sensitive I'd become about the details of the Dragonborn's history.
After a few days had gone by, word got around that I was there for information and curious about the past. This led to a small but steady stream of visitors. Of course, most of these had nothing significant to impart. They were simply using my interests as a chance to pass the time of day with me and question me about the outside world. Even today, Dawnstar is a dull town, with all of the cold and none of the variety of Windhelm. It must have been even worse in the Dragonborn's time: a small port, a few mines, the Jarl's hall, an inn, and not much else. I found that describing the wonders of the Imperial City and the Emperor's court was a comforting distraction while I worked to fit Serana's information into my overall picture of the Dragonborn.
Dawnstar had been on the Stormcloak side during the civil war, and so the Dragonborn was not quite such a hero here as she had become in the holds that had stayed loyal to the Empire. She had been part of the invasion force, sometimes its spearhead, and her style of fighting had been legendary for its ruthless efficiency. The Imperial historians had never said this in so many words, but they had left many hints scattered through their narratives: carefully worded expressions of surprise that there were so few prisoners taken in actions where the Dragonborn had a leading role, or the story of an incident during which she shot and killed a dozen fleeing Stormcloak in quick succession, each with a single arrow to the back or head. This was included ostensibly to illustrate her martial prowess, but some readers must have wondered why she turned their deaths into sport when they were already defeated and on the run. Her intensity hadn't been forgotten in Dawnstar, and the memories were kept fresh by semi-seditious material that was still being sung at private parties or distributed in secret, ballads lamenting the sad fate of Ulfric Stormcloak for instance, or pre-war copies of Nords, Arise! preserved like holy writ, of course kept carefully clear of the eyes of outsiders.
There would never be another rebellion, everyone knew that. The disloyal murmurs were nothing more than sentimental retrospectives over a lost cause, sleepy old men complaining into their mead in the far corners of the taverns, where the light was dimmest. But nothing could stop them of dreaming of a different ending, Ulfric as High King and the Imperials driven out forever. Of course, in reality, it had been the Dragonborn who had cut off Ulfric's head on the steps of his own throne after he was captured when Windhelm fell. A touch of irony there, since the two of them had first met at what was supposed to have been their own execution. It had been Ulfric's own suggestion she do the deed, because it would make for a better song, he said. He'd been right about that.
"He joined up because he loved this land and felt it would be better off under its own rulers, free from outsiders. I don't know whether he would have done the same if he'd known how it would end. Probably. He was brave and stubborn. You southerners see that and think stupid as well, but that's blind of you and unfair. Taking a risk to do what's right, if that's stupid, every army ever seen was stupid, so he's in good company."
I reassured her that I didn't think anyone in the story was stupid.
"And some too smart for their own good, like that woman," she muttered. "Proud of themselves, no care for the mess they leave behind. My uncle was never able to decide whether he admired her or hated her. I, I tend to the hate side myself. Strange since he was the one who suffered at her hands, and I wasn't even born when all of this happened. Thinking about things, imagining from others' tales, that leads dark ways. I wonder if that was what happened to her, how she became what she was."
Frisar Fire-keeper was a very old woman with little use for anyone other than her close kin, and I had had to go to her farm, a morning's walk from Dawnstar, several times before she would talk to me. It was a grand-nephew who had told me of her, as someone with tales from the war that she told over and over again, like the skeleton of a bard's chant stripped of most of its music and beauty. She wasn't happy at being found, and by a southerner at that, but the chance to tell the old story once more reconciled her to my alien origins and incomprehensible motivations.
One of her quirks was that she never used the Dragonborn's title or name. It was always "that woman," or "the woman," or just "her," in a dismissive tone of voice, as if such a person didn't deserve any more specific identification. Or "that Breton horse thief," to remind her listeners how the Dragonborn had arrived in Skyrim in the first place, a criminal on the way to being executed.
"He fought that woman at Fort Dunstead," she began. "He'd left his farm and joined the Stormcloaks early; Dunstead's a ways from Dawnstar, but a soldier goes where he's told. He already knew about her, of course. The ones left after Whiterun. They told him..."
Her account was fragmentary, rambling, and repetitive, full of names and references she clearly didn't understand. Once or twice, she became so emotional or confused that she lost the thread of the story entirely and broke into tears. But we have a trick in situations like that, a little spell that once cast puts the uncertain narrator to one side and lets us listen to something closer to the original tale. Not very nice, perhaps, to use magic on someone without telling them, but without it, I would have understood little. With it, listening to her carefully, and concentrating, I could hear through her voice to her uncle's, a very young man who had tried to do what he thought was right, only to encounter the Dragonborn and barely live to tell the tale.
Whiterun was a shock to the young dreamers in the Stormcloaks. Up to that time, it had seemed easy; the Imperial forces were led by ignorant southerners and Ulfric had sympathizers everywhere. All it would need for victory was a few campaigns, some recalcitrant jarls removed from their thrones, and the Stormcloaks would send the Imperial army back to where it had come from, Cyrodiil, where they could always fight the elves. If they had the courage, that was.
Then the dragons had come, and the Dragonborn. Hard to tell which was more of a menace. The dragons attacked everywhere, with no regard to Imperial or Stormcloak, outsider or native. Anything that moved was fair game to them. The worst of it, to the soldiers, was that the dragons couldn't be killed. You could damage one badly enough to drive it off – after it had put down half your detachment – but they just didn't die. Couldn't. The more you hurt them today, the fouler mood they would be in when they came back for second helpings tomorrow. In the end, the Stormcloak commanders told their troops to hide if they saw a dragon coming, scatter into the forests or get off the walls of the forts and stay deep inside until the beast lost interest and flew off to attack ice trolls or a mammoth. That will kill the morale of even the best soldiers: to be ordered to run away, even from a foe like a dragon. Humiliating. But it made sense, if you could do so little good fighting it.
Unless you were the Dragonborn, of course. Unless you had been granted the power to destroy a dragon both body and soul. One person had received that gift from the Nine. A woman, a slightly built, frail-looking, blue-eyed Breton whose touch left nothing of a dragon but a few crumbling bones. And for some obscure and puzzling reason, she'd thrown in her lot with the Imperials, even after they'd welcomed her to Skyrim by trying to cut off her head. Every Stormcloak knew about that, and feared what it might mean: an omen, perhaps? A sign to show whom the Nine truly favored? No one openly admitted to such thoughts, but no one could escape them.
Still, it didn't seem to matter much at first. She killed dragons. Any dead dragon was one less to worry about, and she had plenty of incentive to deal with them, whatever side she was on. The Imperials were losing as many men as we were – probably more, since they were hesitant to leave the main roads and lose themselves in the bush where they might avoid the notice of the eyes above.
Outsiders, all of them. Obviously, we thought at first, Talos and Kynareth had put this particular outsider here to deal with the dragons. She needn't bother her mind with other things, like our battle to be free.
But she did. Our defeat at Whiterun showed how wrong our assumptions had been. When only a few stragglers, most wounded, made their way back, and told everyone of what had happened there. The high command hushed them up, sent them away to places where they had only the horkers to talk to, but the damage was done.
The Dragonborn was at Whiterun. We'd already found her an expert fighter with sword and bow, who had taken down more than one of ours in skirmishes. That would have been bad enough, but it wasn't enough, not by a long shot, not for her. She had a mage's staff of fireballs as well, a staff that could turn a man into a screaming torch, burning brightly, running blindly, until he collapsed, dead before he hit the ground. A horrible sight. Still, such staffs were things that most of the men had seen, or at least heard about. It was everyday elemental magic, something a wizard might do, puff fire to amuse a group of children in peaceful times, turned lethal in war. You dodged it. Or not, and paid the price. Not much more deadly than a catapult, when you came down to it.
She'd call up fetches too, from gods know where, fire and ice and storm atronachs, all of them formidable, but we knew she was only able to summon these one at a time, and they served her will for no more than a few moments before dissolving and having to be conjured again. And with luck and skill, they could be taken down. Like the fireballs, the fetches made our lives harder, but not unbearably so. We wouldn't be frightened off by cheap mage trickery like that, or at least that was what we told ourselves before Whiterun.
At Whiterun, we began to see some of the other things she could fight with. Not steel or fire. Worse things.
One was a conjured dragon, a dragon fetch, brought mildewed and tattered from some den in the nether world. It was a dragon that attacked only us and left the Imperials alone, set on us when we couldn't afford to run for cover, since running would mean leaving the field to the enemy. After Whiterun, some of our men nicknamed it Sithis, in bitter homage to the Lord of the Void. It certainly looked like a native of His realm, sent to harvest souls for the greater glory of His dominion. All the same, it was still a dragon, something that we had seen before, and still a fetch, one that didn't – couldn't – stay in this world for very long.
Another was a new summons, something even our most experienced mages had never seen or heard of. The closest thing it resembled was a storm atronach, with its whirling body of rocks, but instead of crackling sparks, it had red-hot clouds of sand and ash that swirled around it and enveloped any enemy foolish enough to try to close with it. There was one outside the main gate of Whiterun when we attacked. Try as we might, we could not bring the thing down, and no matter how long the attack went on, it didn't disappear on its own like a conjured atronach or a fetch would have. It just stayed there, and we could not pass. Later, I heard people say that it was a creature of Dark Elf magic from the ash-strewn slopes of Red Mountain, a volcano spirit, but how and where the Dragonborn had learned to call it up and bind it, only the gods knew.
The last and most terrifying had no name or nickname or suggested origin. All we knew was that it was something she had to call forth personally, with her own hands. Some of the survivors said she used a staff; others claimed that there was no staff involved and it was a spell. Whatever it was, it came forth as a stream of foul black liquid like tar that splashed out and stuck to the ground, up to twenty or thirty feet away from her. But it wasn't tar. It was alive. It would pool on the ground, dark and shining, and then, suddenly, black tentacles would rise from the glossy surface, whipping around, blindly seeking for prey. They stabbed and tore at anything within range, and their touch was poison. If you were nimble and lucky, you could escape, but if you made a single slip, the glittering black fingers would strangle you or rip you to pieces, leaving nothing but bloody fragments when the black fluid vanished into wisps of dark mist and ebony stains on the rocks and sand. Every time our forces appeared to be making progress in the struggle to breach the walls of Whiterun, she would appear and spray that liquid horror over the ground before them, and the way would be closed again. In a matter of minutes, of course, it would disperse, but few had the nerve to wait it out and even fewer the heart to return to the attack over the dark stains that it left. And if any did, they were liable to find that the next dose of ebon gunk would be sent splashing around their feet, leaving them only an instant choice between flight and death.
I wasn't there, by the grace of the gods. My unit had been kept in reserve, garrisoning Fort Dunstead, out in the frozen back of beyond, buried in snow. We had complained bitterly of our posting, feeling neglected, left out of the action, but after Whiterun, the complaints ceased. All we could think of then was when this nightmare would arrive on our own doorstep, and whether we would be able to do anything about it when it did. Some were quicker than others to reach a conclusion. By the time Fort Dunstead was attacked, a third of our force had deserted. I was bitter at what in my youthful enthusiasm I saw as betrayal, but later, I didn't have the heart to blame them. For all the good we did to Ulfric's cause in the end, we might as well have thought first of our own safety, hired a courier to deliver the fort's keys to the nearest Imperial camp, and headed back home.
Our end came three weeks after our failure at Whiterun. In my youthful ignorance, I'd thought we'd at least be able to put up some sort of a fight. Swords clashing on the battlements, tattered banners flying proud, war cries, that sort of thing. Instead, it was an abattoir, and we were the pigs, with barely time for one short squeal before death. It was just like that. Nothing more noble.
The attack came in the early morning, just before dawn. The first we knew of it was when three of our sentries fell dead in quick succession, sniped off the walls. It must have been her, or that companion of hers, the one people whispered was a vampire princess; no one else could have been so accurate in the dim gray light before sunrise. The garrison tumbled out of their beds and into the courtyards or onto the walls, where at least half of them burned to death seconds later when that damned dragon swooped down on them. It had been waiting up there, perched on one of the crags. Perfect timing. They knew exactly what they were doing, and we were just amateurs.
I remember that I wasn't frightened. Things moved too fast for that. My post was on the gate tower in the outer, wooden wall, but I never got there. Instead I found myself with a useless sword and no helmet standing at the other side of the courtyard, staring out over the smoking bodies of the dead and waiting for the first Imperials to come through the gate. I remember noticing that the gate tower was belching flames, and thinking in a detached manner, if this attack had come an hour later, when I would have been on duty in that tower, I would already be dead.
She was the first through the gate. Of course. Riding not a living horse but some hellish beast put together from bones and blue fire. She had a crossbow, and I knew that if I rushed her I'd be dropped before I got half-way. I could see her face, lit by the flames, even at that distance. She was enjoying herself, excited, tossing her head. Happy. In her element, on that nightmare of a mount in the half-light of pre-dawn, with her dragon fetch still making passes at the fort's one intact tower and burning the screaming men who had instinctively taken to the high ground to fight.
Then she glanced to her right and caught sight of me. It was strange; time seemed to slow down until everything was at a crawl. She raised her crossbow, in slow motion, and I turned to break to the side, thinking to run along the base of the wooden palisade to take cover behind the abandoned pub in the courtyard, its owner murdered by the bandits who'd held this place before we arrived. I suppose I was still trying to play the hero, get behind them, work around under cover and take them from the rear. Or maybe I just wanted to get to the gate and run like the wind to anywhere but there. I don't remember.
I got about three steps before I stumbled over a corpse. I suppose that dead man saved my life, because that was the instant she fired. Instead of going through my brain, her crossbow bolt hit me in the side of the head, well forward. I saw a burst of red, blood and flame – they told me later that it had been a fire arrow, lucky because it cauterized the wound and kept me from bleeding out – and then darkness.
The last thing I felt, just before I lost consciousness on the icy ground, was a heavy blow at waist level, as if someone had kicked me, bruising me badly, but not piercing the skin. It was a second shot from her, one that shattered on the blade of my war ax, cracking it into uselessness. That's what they told me later, anyway. I wasn't in any shape to note the details at the time. She'd not been content with just blinding me. She'd tried to gut-shoot me as well and had failed by mere chance. She went on to deal with the others delighted by the idea she'd killed me, I don't doubt.
Many hours later, I came back to consciousness inside what I guessed was Fort Dunsted, though I could not see, only hear and smell. I knew the battle must be over, and we had lost. I also remembered, in a vague way, that the Imperials didn't kill their prisoners, except perhaps the highest officers, whom they considered guilty of treason. I wasn't anywhere near important enough to be in line for that sort of treatment.
But it was so dark. The pain in my eyes, and the bandage tightly over them. I didn't remember what had happened at first.
Then a hand on my arm, and a woman's voice, an older woman.
"Stay quiet. You'll live, but you've been very badly hurt. Everyone thought you were dead. One of the soldiers finally noticed you were still breathing hours later."
A pause.
"Your eyes are gone. You were hit in the head by a crossbow bolt. It went right across your face, from the side, through your eye sockets. There's nothing we can do. I'm afraid you'll never see again. Better start getting used to that thought. You'll be dealing with it for the rest of your life. But I've a cousin who lost his sight to disease, and he still manages to get along pretty well. The other senses become sharper to make up for what you've lost."
I slumped back and slowly shook my bandaged head. It was a big thought, and would take a while to digest. Blind. Alive but blind. Focus on the "alive" part, I told myself. And my hearing seemed to have sharpened already, not that it had been bad to begin with. Deprived of sight, I concentrated on listening.
My cot was placed to one side of the common area for the Imperial officers and men, to keep an eye on me I suppose, out of a mixture of benevolence and suspicion. If I raised my arm, they summoned the healer to see to whatever I needed. There were tables not too far away, and ale. I could smell it. The cheese too; it had the aroma of dirty foot-wraps.
Scraps of conversation came to my ears as men came and left. Most of it seemed to be about the battle, of course. The talk was soft, cautious, rather than loud and triumphant. Perhaps that's why they had won, I thought, they spent less time boasting and more time thinking what might go wrong. But there seemed to be something else in the voices that faded in and out around me.
"...I don't care to see that ever again. Buried the bodies today, one big pit. Most of them you couldn't recognize anyway. We had to scrape some of them off the battlements with shovels..."
"...If that was what the gods wanted when they sent her, all I can say is that the gods are less merciful than General Tullius, or even Ulfric. Ulfric's a hard man, but he wouldn't just roast soldiers like sides of beef."
"Maybe it's all for the best. Maybe if word of this gets around, the next time we go into battle, the other side will just break and run and we'll win without a drop of blood spilt. The more horrible and hopeless for them, the better, I say..."
"...It's the smile that everyone remembers. With her powers and her luck, you'd think the men would stay close to her in battle, but they treat her as though she were fire and they were ice. I know they're always a bit restrained around battlemages, but this is different."
"I noticed that too. The smile, the excitement... she enjoys it too much to be healthy. The Empire's just an excuse for her. That horse of hers... she told a friend of mine that it was a fetch, called up by a spell she'd found on a trip to Oblivion. And that she liked to use it because it puts the fear of death into our enemies. I suppose she's been too wrapped up in things to notice that it puts the fear of death into us as well."
"Never thought we'd have someone fighting for us who made side trips to Oblivion in her spare time. Did she say why she happened to be there, or are we just to assume she's on first-name terms with Mehrunes Dagon?..."
"...That one she always travels with, the one who never talks, except to her...she gives me the cold shudders. A fellow I know said she's a vampire. Look at the eyes, he said. You can tell from the eyes. Damned if I do that, though. I don't want her noticing me. Might end up on a menu."
"Where are the two of them now, by the way? Haven't seen them around since yesterday noon."
"You mean the happy couple? Off to Solitude to bring the good news to the General, no doubt... fort retaken, only a few casualties, sorry no prisoners because they all just happen to be dead. Except for that poor sod over there who was mistaken for dead long enough that he managed to stay alive."
"Officially, he's dead too. He'll never fight for them again, so why turn him in? But did you see how she glared at him yesterday morning when she found him here and breathing? A real unfinished business look. We'd best get him out of here as soon as we can..."
"...A bloodbath, but it wasn't our blood at least. That's what happens when your point woman is a mad archer who shoots everyone and everything two or three times with flaming arrows just to make sure...where did she get that weapon anyway? Neither side in this war is using crossbows."
"Dawnguard equipment, I think. My brother took service with them and he told me that's their standard issue. You're only going to get one shot at a boss vampire, he said, so you have to make it count."
"An officer with an Imperial rank, Dawnguard equipment, a demon horse, and a vampire sidekick. Who spends her vacation time in Oblivion. Well, that makes perfect sense. Will someone tell me what I'm missing here?..."
I heard all this and more in scraps as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Never the beginning or the end of a full conversation, but the general tone was clear. The Dragonborn was their ally, and they knew that she and what she commanded made them all but invincible, but they were terrified of her. There were too many questions around her, questions they didn't dare ask, because the way she acted on the battlefield frightened them into silence. Many years later, I happened to meet two men who had fought for the Imperials in the Battle of Whiterun, and they told me they had felt just the same way. They had never quite trusted the Dragonborn, even though the people of the city, the civilians and the Jarl, idolized her. They too thought she killed for sport, and looked forward to a battle in a way no professional soldier ever would. She became something else, at least in a fight, no longer anything familiar or human. And perhaps she would turn and kill them one day, for any reason or none at all, and it would mean no more to her than killing the Stormcloaks had.
I spent the next few days on that cot, until finally I could stand without falling down from dizziness. The Imperial officers and men were all very kind and considerate, and this was a great help to me in getting over my anger and frustration at our defeat and my injuries. Fort Dunstead is only a short distance away from the Hall of the Vigilant of Stendarr, which had been attacked and destroyed by vampires some time before my unit arrived. The Vigilant were rebuilding, and they had made contact with the Imperial troops in the fort almost as soon as it fell. Two of them happened to be going on a journey that passed close by my home village, and they took me back with them. And there I have remained, supporting myself mostly by gardening and raising herbs, and telling my story to anyone who seemed interested.
Many people have asked me if I am still angry at the Dragonborn for what happened at Fort Dunstead. It's a hard question to answer. Sometimes I do feel anger, not for her shooting me – there was a war on, after all, and I was armed and on the opposing side – but for the second bolt, for firing a shot into a fallen man with an arrow sticking out of his head just to make sure he was dead. And angry, too, at the horrible way some of my friends and comrades died. She was so at home on a battlefield, so good at everything connected with arms. Couldn't she have thought of a less deadly way to take the fort? She seemed to delight in our suffering. But then I remember that the way she did it at least saved the Imperials from losing any of their men, and as an Imperial officer, her first responsibility was to them and their welfare. I might have done the same. I don't know.
"You see, you see, he could never make up his mind on it," the old lady was still saying when I surreptitiously released the spell and came back to the present world and her voice. "But I can. If you like to burn people, you're a bad person. Possessed, she was. That was why she liked it so much, liked to fight, to kill."
I nodded, and she continued, "Are you going to remember it right? You weren't writing any of it down, just sitting there listening with your eyes closed. You looked a bit possessed yourself. Do you have it all, or do I have to go over it again?"
"That won't be necessary," I replied. "I think I have a clear enough picture now, and I'll be careful to record it in writing as soon as I return to the inn. Thank you very, very much for sharing it. I'll see that it becomes part of the story, and credited to you and your uncle."
"You're a funny one yourself," the old lady said suddenly, fixing me with her gaze in a way that made me a bit uneasy. "All this work over old stories about that horrible woman. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a waste of time in the end."
I smiled.
"We have to wait to the end to see that, don't we? But you've made some things clearer to me. Thank you again."
The great-nephew who had introduced me had been waiting out on the porch for us to finish, and he rode back into town with me. He seemed relieved that the whole thing was over, and that his great-aunt had been left in a relatively good mood. Apparently, she had a formidable temper if things didn't go her way.
"To be frank," he said to me after we dismounted in front of the inn in Dawnstar, "I didn't know if she would ever talk to me again if anything went wrong. But she does love to tell that story, though no one wants to hear it any longer, and you had enough sense just to sit there and listen, rather than interrupting her with comments and questions. Did you really understand it? I've heard it often, and some of the parts in the middle have never made any sense to me at all."
"We're trained to deal with that," I replied. "I'll write it all down tonight, but it was clear enough. Your uncle was a remarkable man."
He shrugged.
"I hardly knew him. I understand he talked about those times all the time, just as she does. It gets a bit much for those of us who weren't there and never saw any of it. Just useless bits of the past."
I nodded, and went into the inn to my desk, my parchments, and my memories.