The Orc came loping up to the small group. Irileth studied her coolly: so this was the woman the Jarl had sent. "She'll accompany you to the watchtower. You're to wait until she arrives, and then go together. Your mission is to assist the men at the watchtower and get them back alive if possible. Her mission is to kill the dragon and keep it from coming here. If she fails, then you must kill it yourself. But not until. Take archers and mages that can fire from a distance. I don't want my guards in danger any more than they have to be. A quick finish to this would be best." His face darkened. "Gods forbid it come here." He stared out of the western window again, scanning the skies.
"Sir," Irileth had ventured, cautiously, "who is she?"
"She came from Helgen," said the Jarl. "One of the Stormcloak captains based in Riverwood sent her on. He isn't sure where she came from and she won't say, but she's apparently strong, quick, and sharp."
"A Stormcloak captain? Sir..."
"I doubt that dragons are assisting either the Empire or the rebellion," the Jarl sighed impatiently. "Against dragons, we are all mortals, Stormcloak or no. This woman apparently escaped from the dragon with her hands tied, and led the other survivors out of the city. If not for her, it's possible that none would have survived, and we wouldn't have had time to prepare here. I've spoken to her myself, and I trust her. You're to listen to her, Irileth," the Jarl had said, his back to her, staring out the window. He turned his head to regard her out of the corner of his steel-grey eye. "Especially if she tells you to back off."
The Orc reached their group and stood waiting to be acknowledged. She wore strange, striking armor, covered from head to toe in blackened steel etched with intricate patterns of small red and gold runes. She approached smoothly and easily, her armor rustling faintly. A sleek gorget and pointed bevor covered the bottom half of her face, up to the bridge of her nose; the rest of her face was covered by her helmet, which towered over Irileth. Even the Orc's shoulders were almost as high as Irileth's eyes. The breathing slits on the bevor furled steam. A large battleaxe was slung across her back in a black leather sleeve; Irileth also noticed a lean bow and some long, barb-tipped arrows. Irileth nodded to her.
"Captain," said the Orc. Her voice was deep and oddly metallic; the bevor had apparently been shaped to distort her voice.
"Good, you're here. Are you ready?"
She nodded.
"Let's move out. We'll get our wounded out and assist you as we can." The captain signaled to the soldiers nearby and they all started across the plain together. After a few minutes, the watchtower loomed out of the fog, hewn half to the ground. Rubble was everywhere, and fire licked at the sky through a gaping hole that had used to be a much smaller window. Smoke was sharp on the air as a hot wind swept across the group. One soldier gasped and a few others exclaimed or swore. The captain was grimly silent.
As they approached, Irileth could see three soldiers standing over a fourth who was sprawled in the grass. She strode quickly over to them. One of them raised his head at her approach and blanched in dismay. "Get back!" he hissed. "It's still here somewhere!" Another soldier, an archer, scanned the skies, her bow in her hands. The man on the ground was pale, the scorched grass under him spattered with blood. He had three deep rends in his left forearm that were oozing slowly. The archer's sleeve was torn off at the shoulder and had apparently been made a makeshift tourniquet, tied just above the elbow. The wounded man stared sightlessly at the sky, evidently in shock.
"Get him out of here, back to the road," Irileth ordered a pair of her men, who wordlessly scooped up the man between them and began carrying him carefully away, murmuring quiet encouragement to him. "Marek, go with them and see to him." She turned to the man who had spoken. "Where did it go? Which direction?"
"It went up the hill," said the man. "But–"
There was a discordant hiss from somewhere up the mountain above them, a creaking and snapping of branches and clashing of leaves. The soldiers shifted nervously; some scanned the mountainside, and a few took their weapons into their hands. The wind carried a distant roar. A nervous mutter went up among the group. Irileth saw the Orc reach back and place a hand on her bow.
There was one last series of sharp cracks, and the dragon hurled itself into the sky, bursting from the trees; though it was as large as four horses, it had the ungainly, barely-controlled movement of a creature too young to have mastered flight. The soldiers around Irileth huddled more tightly together, their group now bristling with weapons held at the ready. The wounded soldier, being carried away across the field, moaned aloud. Irileth snapped quick orders and the soldiers rearranged themselves; it would not do for a group to be caught all at once by flame or frost.
The dragon hauled itself through the air on wings like sails, scrabbling at the air with its claws in an effort to gain height. It swooped up, then hurtled down towards them, screeching. Its scales were iridescent in the sunlight. Irileth roared for her archers to fire. Arrows punched through its wings like needles through cloth just before the dragon slammed into the ground, landing squarely on its four clawed feet in front of the watchtower. Its eyes flashed hungrily and it started for the knot of archers standing nearby. "Ice!" Irileth cried, and three mages stepped forward to hurl huge blue icicles at the beast. Most simply glanced off or ricocheted. One clipped the dragon in the teeth, and it jerked its head around towards the mages, annoyed. "Yol," it snapped. A jet of flame lanced toward the men, catching one mage in the shoulder. He howled and whirled to the ground, rolling around and around. He continued to writhe on the ground after the flames had gone out, swearing venomously. The two other mages scattered, flinging themselves away over the smoldering grass. Irileth thanked the gods that it had rained two days ago.
The archers kept peppering the dragon with arrows, but none of them seemed to pierce its thick grey scales. "Eyes," the Orc yelled. Irileth cursed herself for being so slow, and shouted orders to the archers. The Orc herself took aim and sent an arrow skipping off the dragon's nose. Its head waved on its long neck and swiveled to face her instead. The Orc glared back; it stood about twenty feet in front of her, watching her suspiciously. She moved carefully, sliding from side to side, to keep its attention focused on her. She slowly unsheathed her axe, making no sudden movements.
Irileth wasted no time taking advantage of the dragon's distraction. She shouted for the archers to spread around the dragon, covering every inch of sky and earth available. They fired at will, aiming at the dragon's face. The mages cast more ice spikes at the dragon's wings at Irileth's order, blasting jagged holes in them with craggy chunks of ice. The dragon was becoming confused and irritated with all the projectiles from every direction, spraying fire in erratic jets. Irileth was suddenly afraid that it would take flight and flee into the mountains where they couldn't find it. She took a deep breath and howled, "Spearmen, to me!" The three spearmen who had been waiting for her command sprang to her side. She turned to look at them: they looked frightened, but defiant. Good.
"Captain!" the Orc barked suddenly. "Keep your soldiers back." She hadn't taken her fierce gaze from the dragon, and in fact now stepped forward. Her armor glinted red and gold in the afternoon sun.
"Are you crazy?!" Irileth yelled, taken aback.
"Are you?" the Orc yelled back. "Pointed wooden sticks won't be much good here. Keep at the wings, keep it on the ground. Keep them out of it." She broke gaze with the dragon for an instant to look over at Irileth. "Stay. Back." She reached up to adjust her bevor, twisting it in some way, as she turned back to the dragon. She hefted the great axe in her hands, and as she turned her head Irileth could see that her bevor had been somehow widened, and was now shaped like the mouth of a trumpet.
There was no time to wonder about it. She ordered the spearmen near her to take up bows instead, and watched in disbelief as the Orc raised her axe. The dragon's eyes narrowed. "Yol. Tuur," it growled.
A sheet of flame burst out of the air and streaked towards the Orc. Irileth heard the soldiers cry out in dismay behind her. "Keep shooting!" she yelled, as the Orc was wrapped in fire. Irileth cursed, and then cursed again as she saw the Orc, impossibly, still standing. In fact, standing there as though nothing at all had happened, though the grass and ground around her were scorched and smoking. She stood still, eerily still; steam rose from her armor as though from a hot spring stone. The dragon wove its head to one side, eying the warrior. She shifted her weight ever so slightly.
"By the Eight," someone breathed behind Irileth. An arrow zipped past her ear and actually stuck in the dragon's neck. It whipped its head around to investigate the arrow's source. The soldiers scrambled backward as it brought its front claws around, preparing to spring.
The Orc moved quickly. Leaping forward, she took a deep breath and shouted at the dragon. Irileth heard her voice thunder, "FUS!", but the rest was lost on her as she was buffeted backward by a rush of sharply clean air. There was a crack like a thunderbolt and a lance of fierce blue light raced from the Orc at the dragon, slapping it in the side of the head. The dragon stumbled. "Get back!" the Orc yelled again, furiously. Irileth, goggle-eyed, stammered the order to her group and scrambled back with them behind a chunk of what had been watchtower. She glanced around: they were just as thunderstruck as she. She peeked over the rock to watch.
The Orc woman now had the dragon's full attention. "Ogiim," it snarled. She hefted her battleaxe and laughed. Irileth cringed; it was an eager, arrogant, bloodthirsty laugh, made all the more ghastly by the bevor. The dragon seemed to sniff the air, and then it charged with snakelike speed. The Orc's laugh turned wicked, cruel. She side-stepped its rush and shoved her axe at the side of its long neck to stagger it further. It slid awkwardly forward, but already turning, already lifting its head and dragging its claws at the sky. It kicked its back legs, trying to find the Orc's stomach. The Orc swung her axe almost playfully, deep into the dragon's back left thigh. It stuck.
The dragon's shriek was terrible. It scraped across Irileth's ears and made her clench her teeth and squeeze her eyes shut unwillingly. One of the archers behind her screamed out loud, grinding his fists against the side of his head; a spearman swayed sickly, leaning heavily on the butt of his spear. It didn't stop the Orc for a moment. She was already up, up, leaping, ducking the dragon's frantic snap at her head, jerking the bloody axe up with her. It released a gout of dark blood as she yanked it out of the dragon's leg. She swung; her axe rang off the dragon's scales, skittering off its shoulder. She dropped it briefly and pulled a wickedly curved dagger from her boot, its edge gleaming ice blue in the sunlight. She plunged it into the side of the dragon's neck as it whipped its head around to try to catch her, too slowly.
"Dir volaan!" she taunted, which seemed to enrage the dragon even further. It screamed and sprayed flame into the sky. Laughing, she sidestepped the dragon's teeth snapping at her leg, each tooth as long as her hand. "Dir volaan," the Orc trumpeted again, then bent her head to roar at the dragon's face, now rising from the ground for another attack. "IISS! SLEN! NUSS!"
The syllables rolled out of her like thunder in a voice that seemed too loud, too deep, too awesome for any mortal. The words had the ring of doom, and even though none of the soldiers could understand them, they shuddered. Irileth felt the air around them constrict, somehow, grow tighter and colder. It was like being drenched in ice water and suddenly squeezed at the same time, all over. The sensation lasted only a moment, followed by another frigid crack and a pop of air, and a dense white cloud burst seemingly from the air around the dragon's head. It was barely there; the next thing Irileth knew, the dragon's head was encased in a layer of clear ice almost a handspan thick. It flopped helplessly to the ground, its screams muffled by its horrible mask, ice chipping off a wayward stone. The dragon's neck and legs thrashed, trying to wrench itself free. Irileth found that her mouth was sagging open; she forced herself to close it, forced herself to keep watching. She would need to report everything to the Jarl later. She clenched her trembling hands into fists.
The Orc woman walked deliberately to stand next to the dragon's neck and took a lumberjack's stance. She heaved the huge, bloody axe into the sky, scattering red drops in the sunlight, and brought it down with all her strength. The dragon's neck jerked up, freed from the ice-crusted head; its body slithered bonelessly to the ground. Blood sprayed from head and neck in a hot blast. The dragon's body shuddered reflexively, and the Orc bent to strip its claws and a few scales from its hide as proof of its death. As she did this, a hot glow leapt from the dragon's hide up into her hands. For a moment, the Orc was swathed in a blue and orange light, which vanished just as quickly.
There was a heavy silence, broken only by the Orc lifting her axe to wipe it on the grass. The soldiers around Irileth looked stunned, unable to believe the swift and terrible end to the battle. "Is it dead?" someone whispered.
"Its head is off," another voice replied. "That's dead as dead can be."
"What was that light?"
"Never seen it before."
"Never seen a dragon before," someone else pointed out.
"How did she do that? Was it a frost spell?"
"No," one of the mages said. "Our spells don't work like that. I didn't feel anything. This was...different."
"What was she saying?"
The Orc woman held out her hand in a warning gesture as Irileth and her soldiers tentatively approached. She stalked tersely off and behind the ruins of the watchtower, where she stayed alone for several minutes while the soldiers examined the dragon's corpse and muttered to each other excitedly. The head was still encased in thick ice, unlikely to melt anytime soon in the autumn wind. Irileth stood apart, frowning at the watchtower where the Orc had gone.
"Captain?" asked one of the archers, hesitantly.
"What is it?"
"What do you know about that woman?"
"Just as much as you," said Irileth. "Let's go; we have to get that man back to the healers, and I have a report to make." She shook her head. What could she possibly say to the Jarl?
"What about her?" asked a spearman. "Should we wait?"
"She hardly needs an escort," Irileth said dryly, "and it looks like she wants to be alone. The Jarl said stay away from her if she says, so don't bother her." She turned to face the group. "All of you, listen. I don't want any of you jabbering about what happened here today. This woman did us all a great service and she likes her privacy. You are not to spread rumors, speculate, or, Eight forbid, ask her to talk about whatever it is that she did. All that matters is that we are alive and that the dragon is not. End of story."
"What should we tell people about the dragon?"
"As little as possible. Say we shot it with arrows and kept it on the ground. Say she hacked it with her axe and cut its head off. Say it was a lucky strike. Don't mention the...other magic. Take credit for yourselves if you like; I don't think she'll mind." Irileth cast a look over her shoulder, but the Orc was still gone behind the tower. "We need to get back doubletime so the fire mages can get over here and get that fire under control. Think you can stay and make sure it doesn't wander?" she asked one of the mages nearby. "You're fire-trained, right?"
"Yes, captain. I'll stay here," he said. He looked doubtfully up at the burning tower. "Not likely there'll be much left of it come next dawn, though."
"That's all right. Just make sure it doesn't catch the trees. The tower will have to be rebuilt anyway, fire or no. You'll have reinforcements this evening. Rest of you, move out, quick now." The small company gathered their weapons and started trudging toward the road, the sun at their backs. Irileth strode ahead moodily, planning her report. The questions were multiplying in her head, which was a sensation that she never liked. There was no sign of the Orc. Irileth turned one last time as they reached a bend in the road, surveying the blackened stone, the mangled grass and torn-up soil, the limp and utterly lifeless dragon, still helmeted savagely in ice. She shivered and continued on. The smell of smoke was sharp in the air.