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Captain Thorgrim, a frown creasing his heavy brow, looked down at his chest, standing up as he did so. There was a tight feeling behind his ribs, suddenly, and it was starting to ache when he breathed.
Squinting in the half-light he noticed that there was something protruding from his chest. It looked like a stick, a stick with feathers. He looked up and around him with an increasingly perplexed expression. He wasn t sure there was too much of a problem, after all it didn t really hurt as such and he didn t seem to be bleeding. It seemed to be getting dark quickly though so he decided it was best to remove whatever it was and head back to the camp; round up the men for night patrol.
So thinking he raised his hand to remove the stick. Or at least tried to.
What the Looking down he found his hand flapping ineffectually, like a landed fish, on the end of his arm. Strangely he could neither feel it nor raise it. he sat down on the log again, it really was getting stuffy, he could barely breathe. Sweat was breaking out on his forehead.
It was pretty much dark now, or at least he could barely see.
Talos take it, maybe just a quick nap before seeing the men
Captain Thorgrim, eyes rolling upwards in their sockets, fell backwards off of the log and landed with a muffled thud in the bracken.
After a couple of minutes there was a faint stirring in the undergrowth and a slender figure slid lithely out from the bushes, scuttling crablike across the little clearing to the fallen captain, bow held in one hand. It steered around the small fire that the captain had lit, staying in the shadows.
Niamh crouched by Thorgrim, and held the fingers of one hand against the side of his neck, there was a weak and thready pulse. Moving her hand to his face she clamped his jaw closed with the heel of her palm and pinched his nostrils shut between thumb and index finger. After a few moments she let go and felt at his neck again.
Nothing.
Smiling to herself in satisfaction she checked briefly around her for unwelcome attention and finding none, laid her bow on the ground beside her and quickly ferreted through the dead captain s apparel to see what she could find
They say that she lives in the trees. Private Stollnir regarded the gloomy treeline dubiously.
Kurgrim looked up from the fire, stared disbelievingly at the back of the other private s head.
What?
Stollnir turned; The Elf, they say she lives in the trees.
Of course she lives in the trees you dolt! Kurgrim shook his head in exasperation. She s a Bosmer!
The evening was becoming chilly, the sky was clear and what little warmth there had been during the day was leeching away from the ground, leaving it cold. Stollnir frowned and walked back to the fire, squatted down with the others. He glared at his comrade.
That s not what I meant. He said. I meant that she s mysterious she could be anywhere around us right now, and we would never know, then we would end up like all the others.
Bjornulf, their sergeant, put down the venison steak upon which he had been gnawing and looked across the flames, a sneer on his face, he was a bear of a man, as thickset in his mind as he was in his body.
Aaw, poor little Stollnir, not scared of a little wood elf are we?
Private Kurgrim, sitting back on his haunches, made a concilliatory face and turned to look at the sergeant.
My friend here may be wetter than a nursemaid s teat but he does have a point. Look at the fort in Whiterun.
Bjornulf was not to be denied his scorn, however.
Pah! Wet behind the ears regional militia. They got what was coming. No, He said picking up his meat again, let her come near me, I ll show her, besides that he spat out a chunk of gristle into the fire I ve been wondering whether Wood Elf bits are like our women s. I think I might take the opportunity to find out, when we catch her. He grabbed his crotch and winked at the others. If you know what I mean Kurgrim cackled obscenely, but Stollnir stayed silent, and sat staring into the flames.
From the bushes behind them a pair of mismatched eyes, one blood red, one white, glinted in the firelight and regarded the men balefully.
and you ll get what s coming to you too, Sergeant. Said Niamh to herself, a cold hard look on her face. But I ll save you till last, since you re so interested in me.
It was some hours later.
But where are they? Whispered Kurgrim to the sergeant.
Bjornulf turned on the other man.
Not you too! He gestured across the clearing to where Stollnir lay asleep, wrapped in his cloak against the night air. The Captain and Firimund aren t due back for another hour at the very least, maybe not till dawn. Come on private, pull yourself together; bad as that girl over there you are, that damn Bosmer won t be getting anything from us this night I can tell you, even assuming, he said, after pausing for a moment in thought, she s even anything more than some story put together by chastened guards, which I doubt.
Bjornulf regarded himself as a practical man and such talk of Phantom Elves who murdered men in their sleep cut little ice with him. Sure there was that fort outside Whiterun as Kurgrim had said, and sure they had only been militia there but even still they were heavily armed soldiers and she, if she existed, was a practically naked young woman (according to some accounts) barely even out of babe-hood by the standards of her race.
It simply was not possible, besides, if she was out there then if anyone was going to give anyone a seeing-to it would be him giving her one. He grinned to himself and stuck out his bristly chin.
No private, I will hear no more about it, in fact I m going to get some shut-eye. You take first watch and wake Stollnir after. Yes sir. Replied a still un-mollified Kurgrim.
The captain wrapped himself in his cloak and lay down, Kurgrim threw some more sticks on the fire and, knees up to his chin, cloak around him, stared out into the night.
Before long the Sergeant s snoring filled the little clearing, causing Kurgrim to stare briefly at him in annoyance.
A short time later there came a tiny noise and Kurgrim shivered a little, as if from the cold. He coughed slightly and a tiny dribble of blood emerged from his mouth and ran down over his chin. His head slumped down onto his chest and his eyes stared glassily into the fire.
After waiting for a moment, Niamh emerged from the cover of the undergrowth close to where Stollnir lay sleeping. Very quietly and carefully she crept across the clearing to the sleeping form of the private. he was lying on his back, his mouth open, breathing deeply. Niamh squatted by his head a moment, regarding him. He was quite a young man, probably with a young family somewhere. Just a conscript. It was almost a shame.
Almost.
Drawing her dagger she placed one hand over the soldier s mouth and nose whilst with the other she slid the glass blade smoothly into the front his neck through his voicebox, placing her knee firmly on the man s chest as she did so.
Stollnir shuddered underneath her and coughed blood through her fingers. A hot stream of his life gushed out of his neck as the knife slit into it. His eyes snapped open and stared at her face. Looking him right in his terrified eyes Niamh rammed the blade home, so that it emerged through the back of his neck with the hilt pressed tight against his windpipe.
A little twist and it was all over.
Wiping her hand and the blade on the soldier s fur armour, The Bosmer turned her attention to Bjornulf, a dark shape against the dying embers of the fire. Grinning mailiciously, she crept oh-so-slowly over to the sleeping sergeant.
Hello. Said Niamh, quietly.
Sergeant Bjornulf jerked awake, stared in confusion for a moment then focused on the speaker.
You. He breathed.
Niamh leant forward , her face close to his. Bjornulf winced at her breath.
Me. Niamh squatted back down on the dusty ground, her eyes on him. He in turn regarded her, though she was as yet still only dimly-lit in the growing early dawn light.
What he saw was a small, slender female Bosmer, naked indeed but for a pair of bracers and some jewelry, with a body that appeared to be composed chiefly of gristle and sinew. Her breasts were small and pert, high on her rib-outlined chest; her stomach firm and muscular, her legs and arms long and slim. The face that regarded him was framed by lank, greasy black hair, through which he could just see the points of her ears. One of the Elf s eyes was a blind white, whilst the other was blood red on red, the nose was small, the mouth with it s currently pursed lips partially obscured by cracked and weathered warpaint.
Even in the half-light he could tell her skin, burnt and tanned by the sun, was filthy with grime and blood, and in the darkness between her thighs (where, in spite of his circumstances his inner lecher could not help but look) he could make out dark pubic hair, matted and greasy-looking.
She smelt as she looked, wild and fey and overpoweringly, animalistically natural, of blood and sweat and dirt and piss and shit and of the forests and the earth and the sky.
The sergeant was not an educated man but he knew what he liked and the creature before him, even though it regarded him balefully, even though it had clearly stepped straight out of the wild forests and wastes of his country and seemingly out of some myth being completely unlike any bosmer he had ever seen was something that he found he liked very much indeed.
Which was unfortunate.
It was unfortunate because not long after having this thought and feeling an involuntary, but commensurate, stirring in his loins it finally dawned on him that he was not only tied up, but that he was missing both the lower half of his armour and his loincloth. In vain, and hours too late, he struggled. The Wood Elf watched, an amused half-smile flickering over her lips.
Bjornulf, realising it was futile, gave up trying to free himself.
Your men are dead. Said the Wood Elf, her voice surprisingly soft and lilting. Your captain too. You will be soon. Bjornulf had never begged in his life and was not about to start now.
You ll get no satisfaction from me. He growled.
Niamh glanced down at him and grinned. That is very apparent.
The Bosmer adjusted her position next to him, it was now approaching the full light of dawn and she was facing east, the morning sun shining on her ill-kempt, grubby body. He could see how well defined she was and how her skin was marked and scarred by combat and hardship. His gaze slipped between her legs again.
You just can t help yourself can you? She said.
What? His eyes flicked almost guiltily back to her face.
You soldiers are all the same. She said, looking at him with distate. You only want one thing. Bjornulf watched her, his eyes growing increasingly wide, as she transferred her dagger from her right to her left hand, closing her long, slender fingers, the nails cracked and split, around the hilt.
Well guess what? Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
A terrible realisation dawned in the sergeant s eyes.
No. Niamh looked him straight in the eyes and reached between his legs with her free hand Please