An Eventful Journey
Somewhere, somewhere forsaken, there's a little brass plaque. One way or another, it's long since ceased to be in any useful state. But I've got a working memory, and as far as I'm concerned it might as well be mounted, frame and parchment and all, on every wall I ever see.
The plaque reads Be Not Complacent.
It's an impossible standard for a mortal to meet, unfortunately. But if those words haven't served me well so far... well, firstly, that's staggeringly improbable. And secondly, if they haven't, then a certain paranoia on my part must have done the trick regardless.
I'm a man of many faults, but at least I don't count a fatal complacency among them.
My name is Marcus Hayn.
My family makes something of a commoner-aristocracy in Tamriel. If it's a worthy pursuit that a nobleman wouldn't touch – something involving hard labor or a risk to life and limb – then, by reputation, the best choice for the job is a Hayn. This reputation is usually justified.
For my part, I am a coward.
As such, you'd think I know better than to go for a sail in a merchant's vessel along the Gold Coast, barren wastes to the right of me and worse to the left. But that conclusion misses three very important facts:
1. The Ruby-Red Company, my employer until two weeks ago, decided I ought to start guarding an overland caravan to Skyrim. The nicest thing to be said about Skyrim is that it's no longer the epicenter of an all-out draconic war on mortal life – so far as the Ruby-Red know.
2. On handing in my resignation, I had all of forty drakes in my pocket.
3. Merchant vessels along the Gold Coast come with a heavy convoy of Ra Gada warships.
Besides, we've finished that leg of the journey. We've long since left the dockings at Stros M'kai (not much of a city, now, but habitable enough for some desultory trade) and turned our bearings north. When I'm off-shift, I can actually see bits of green on the shore, and even the odd sign of habitation. My joints may be locking up by the third hour in front of the cargo hold, and I might be on hour six, but soon enough, we'll be having half a week's shore leave.
That, of course, before we do the same thing over again, backwards. Supposing Anvil lets us back into the docks. Relations between Hammerfell and Cyrodiil aren't precisely at their best. But assuming they do, I'll use my shore leave there to find a job where danger is something less than inevitable.
Inevitable doesn't mean likely at the moment, of course. The Second Treaty of Stros M'kai is a stalemate with real teeth. But all the same, the Aldmeri Dominion will, eventually, break it, and everyone knows it. It doesn't do for the Thalmor to have a land of reasonably free humans within a distance a few slaves could cover with a raft, even if there is a good strip of barren cursed rock greeting anyone who makes the landing.
The two cook's boys, who have proven over the journey to be quite energetic in every direction but assisting the cook, run past my station. Next, a couple crew members discussing the death of some High Rock nobleman and possible connections with the Emperor's assassination. (Doubtful, in my view. High Rock nobles don't often see eye-to-eye with one another, and as such they're cut down more often than soldiers in a war; at least one of them was bound to go out the same time as old Titus Half-Measure.)
My eyes trail them with a hand on the haft of my axe, just to show I notice them. They won't make trouble for me, I think. No one here seems to be the thieving sort, or at any rate the sort to make off with tapestries and gallery tables in the middle of the ocean. Still, be not complacent.
Braaay. Blatt. Blatt.
Well, you can bet I read the notes on signals before embarking. This horn call means corsairs. A fleet of corsairs, or they wouldn't go anywhere near this convoy. And they can't know how impractical this stuff is to haul and fence, sight unseen.
It was not complacent, I tell myself, to be taken aback by this attack. Expecting everything at once has just the same result as complacency regardless.
Not complacent on my part, anyway. The strangled, frantic quality of the shouting abovedecks is getting me worried about the readiness of our escort.
"-shouldn't be happening-"
"-lost a boat already, the fighting's stiff at the right flank-"
"I can't see – what is it – not the elves? Have the elves-"
I draw my axe from my belt, and with my left hand pat my vest to be sure the knife's still there. If these 'corsairs' have turned out to be Thalmor, they won't have me alive, I promise myself that.
"Divers! Saxhleel! Hold steady!" screams what sounds like Captain ibn-Ared's voice.
Argonians. That would explain why they're only now getting noticed. Good news, then: they're not Thalmor. Bad news: that clattering against the hull sounds like they're coming aboard just about now. And they've already boarded at least two ships equipped against this sort of thing.
I walk casually away from the cargo hold. Even if this treasure was less trouble for marauders than it is, I have never met the stack of merchandise worth getting killed over.
The tumult becomes much more distinct. I realize it's coming from the shaft I reflexively turned my back against.
I turn around, seeing the Argonians storm the place. Now I've been complacent. The narrow ladder was clearly the spot to head them off. Now that they've spilled past that point...
I am a sixty-three-year-old man who brandishes axes to intimidate amateurs. The only ace up my sleeve is a charm spell for people who are still mulling you over anyway. I won't be of any use. I never have been.
So it's good to see they're making a lot of minimally bloody head wounds, and tying the merchants hand-and-foot. They're aiming to incapacitate, not kill. When they get to the cargo hold, they'll see what a waste of-
There is an explosion on the side of my head.
In the next minutes, consciousness is nothing but a series of transient images.
I am bound. I am being carried further into the ship.
I am laid on the galley bench, my arms dangling to the floor behind me, and the woman next to me is not a rower.
I raise my head from the next spell of darkness to see about twenty pirates gathered at front. Not all of them are Argonians – there are Bretons, a Redguard and an Orc, the usual gaggle of Khajiit outlaws you find in this kind of company. The non-Argonians all have big sacks slung over their shoulders that rest surprisingly lightly. I fade again. This time, I know I am fading.
I wake again. I really ache, now, and somehow my head has lolled to the side. A Breton corsair is coming down my row. She has a knife, and the knife is marbled with the gleam of enchantment, deep indigo as the crystal in her left hand...
The older of the cook's boys is still out, only moving in his breath. She brings her knife under his ribs. I see his soul torn from him.
Those awake are blubbering or praying, by the sound of it, and I don't blame them. But I can't afford that. I have to get free before she reaches me. How can I...
I am still wearing my metal boots.
I fall deliberately limp, keep my eyes half-open. When she advances far as the tall Redguard woman at my right side, I spring into action. Both feet get her smack in her lower ribs; she falls back into the row ahead – on top of a dead man; everyone there is already dead. I make an ungainly hop to my feet, and then fall to keep her staggered over that bench. I block her next strike with my hands. The knife damages the cord around my wrist, which is looped just twice for all the people the Argonians needed to truss up, but it's also nicked my right hand, sending a horrible coldness over my body. If I die in the next ten seconds or so...
Oh, please, I think, as I rip my hands free. Aetherius isn't likely to hanker for my soul no matter how I die. I'll just keep concentrating on avoiding death altogether. Difficult, as all this thrashing has no doubt made me a prime target for the pirates, but I might as well try to survive.
I drive my knee into the Breton woman's stomach, grab her knife from her while she's winded again. Keeping my ears open for company, I notice that all the other tumult is behind me.
I break free from the engagement, hopping two-footed in the direction of the door.
"Good work!" shouts a Nord woman I don't think I've seen on this ship before. She has to be older than I am, but she's built like a stone pillar, and she's using that and a pretty nice broadsword to give the corsairs a time of it. Seems the whole bench is joining in on the action, though they're doing it with their bare fists (and one set of claws). "Get your legs free and we'll finish this!" I realize she's talking to me.
Get my legs free? That would be nice. First, there's that Breton catching up with me. I turn and stand, steady as I can with my feet bound smack together, and take a swing at her neck.
The knife does the job. No sign of her soul being ripped from her body, not that I would particularly care if that bit of irony did bite her.
By the time I'm done getting myself free, and afterward getting my searing back straight, I see that all the corsairs in the galley are already taken care of.
"Come on," calls the old woman, racing to the head. "Two bags of gems headed to the flagship, probably more enemy on board. Here are all the weapons they've taken-" she dumps out a sack filled with sharp objects- "get one, quick. You two-" she gestures to two of the more effetely-dressed peddlers- "free the rest. All else, after the divers, we will not let them-"
WHAMP.
The boat shudders. Something has just hit the top deck, with enough force that I don't really care to know what.
All possible escape routes lead to that deck, though, if I don't feel like sinking the ship. I guess I'll have to find out.
The old woman is unfazed. "Probably good news for us," she declares, in the same assured tone with which she seems to say everything. She's probably right to say it, in that panicking will do no one any good.
But (I snatch up my axe) the screams of bloody murder from atop the deck do rather undermine her words.
"You and I take point," she tells me.
I've been a back-of-the-rank man all my life, and that's definitely helped to keep me alive. But this old woman is patently the most competent fighter here, so sticking with her is probably my best bet. If she's decided I'm second... well, this is a merchant vessel. I can't argue, not convincingly. And while letting these people die wouldn't be the worst thing I've done, it's not necessary and it certainly doesn't further my own escape.
So I take her lead.
No corsairs in the halls – no one at all besides us, or at any rate no one breathing.
She begins to ascend the hatch. Rung by rung, step by fearful step, I follow her out of the darkness.
It opens, and I hear her laugh. It's a grim sort of laugh, but it's a real one, all the same. "All clear," she calls down to us, before she finishes her climb.
By the time I hoist myself up, she's surrounded by the mangled bodies of the sack-bearing Saxhleel, and she's swigging from a canteen with one arm around the neck of a dragon. Pale yellow, looking fairly bloody about the wings, about half the size of the ship, and she's embracing it like an old drinking buddy. I think that's a Reman-style numeral I see through a tear in her sleeve. She passes the canteen to the dragon, whose wings start looking better at once.
"Good you could make this engagement, Gollingraav," she tells the dragon, stroking under its horn while squinting toward the outward horizon. "What news of my warships?"
Her warships?
"I could not come sooner." The dragon's voice is a contralto sort of growl. Somehow, the notion of a female dragon had never occurred to me until now. "Your ship zok brom – hm – in front, then two other ships to... east, slight – every man is dead there. They did not have their – hm – their armor. I saw enemy beginning escape on this ship. I attacked here. Now your others have fought pillagers off, they flee. Now I will avenge."
"Not their flagship," says the woman. It looks like it hurts for her to say it. "The mounted ballistae on that thing would pierce your wings like old paper. But yes. This isn't something they can get away from without some serious hurt. Get those three stragglers. Sink the ships whole; we don't need precision here. Then to your mountain, beauty."
Gollingraav rises into the air – it's a very impressive sight, a dragon rising, and I've had the great good luck to miss it till now – then darts off in pursuit. Sure enough, I see when my eyes follow her, the corsairs are peeling west, and making very good speed. The Ra Gada could, probably, catch them, if they weren't saddled with us merchants. And it would take the lot of them to do the job. I don't blame them for not trying.
Also, if it were me, I wouldn't be too keen on losing my soul no matter the odds of overall victory.
I watch, fascinated in spite of myself, as Gollingraav begins to breathe fire into the side of a ship's hull, just above the surface of the ocean. Those two ships in the rear of them are desperately oscillating for some maneuver that will get them past her. I don't envy them. I can't say I have much pity either.
(A good approximation of my sentiments toward the late Emperor, when I think about it.)
"What are the lot of you standing around for?" she shouts at the rest of us. "Ready the lifeboats! Talos knows few enough proper sailors are left here..."
I hear more than one gasp from the Anvillers. The name of Talos makes me feel as though I missed a steep step myself. All right, I do pass the battered young god well-wishes in my head about twice a week. But to say his name aloud... even in Hammerfell, that can't win you many friends. In Cyrodiil, it's not literally unthinkable, but it's close enough to unthinkable that men considerably braver than I flinch at the thought. But this woman doesn't seem to mind the opprobrium, and...
Right. I'm meant to be readying a lifeboat. I move to a pulley.
"Two who can row to each, if you please – follow my lead, can't get lost on the way to Sentinel-"
I can't row, really. But it transpires the woman who was tied up next to me in the galleys can. An embroiderer named Saraa, I remember.
"I'll take your lifeboat, if it's not too much trouble," she says in a rush.
"Why mine?" I ask, eyeing her carefully in the vain hope that, with that glance, I'll discover a motive that might make sense.
"Why?" she cries. "I owe you my very soul. What more reason could you need than that?"
"Ah," I mutter toward the ground. "I did save your life, didn't I." Over the course of saving my own skin, I don't explicitly say, but I don't need to. Her face falls and she doesn't speak to me again.
The old woman elects to take the other oar. I have the feeling she'll want to talk further with me, and that feeling is clenching my gut and making my brow bead up in sweat.
"You're not much," she tells me soon as we're lowered (making a better start than I was expecting), "but you are the best I've got to work with at the moment, and the moment's what I need. I've got a message for the Amir; you've proven your hardiness and that you're worthy of my trust in this."
"Be, ah, don't be complacent." I say this largely because I really, really don't care to have a perfectly competent woman place her trust in someone like me. "It's not as though anyone wants to relocate to a bloody gem in some mercenary's belt."
"And yet you fought," she says. "Bound hand and foot. That's what I like to see, and it doesn't happen often with civilians. And your words of caution don't hurt, either. No. Tell me, are you an old-blood Breton?"
"No," I grunt, hoping that this'll spoil things yet. "Half-Imperial, half-Altmer. I get the hair from my mother."
She surveys my hair, which of course has long since gone clammy white. I'm not thinking as clearly as I ought. "Your name?"
"Marcus Hayn." I immediately wish the surname hadn't slipped out my treacherous mouth.
"Hayn," she repeats. "Good family. Imperial City, for the most part. Forgive me that, if you can."
"Forgive?" I repeat blankly.
"For the three hundred and sixty days I had to spend in preparation. While your kin died one by one."
I had never gone back to the Imperial City, not since the day I set out for Fort Cookfire, and I've certainly never passed the gates of the so-called Peace Plaza. I had never known for a fact that my family there had been wiped out in the Sack. I had thought so, I had assumed so, so I would not be disappointed to know it, but deep down I never...
Then about five seemingly disconnected observations hit me like that many fingers to the face, which at this moment is a mercy. "You... then you're..."
She nods curtly. "Jonna. Forebear Admiral of the Ra Gada fleet." Also Thane of Solitude (or however you say Solitude in prissy ancient Nordic), general of four Imperial legions, liberator of the Imperial City, would have been made the Eighth Champion of Cyrodiil if the Emperor hadn't decided to surrender half the Empire's vital organs the day before her ceremony...
But that would no doubt be bragging. Bona fide heroes will take all the laurels you can throw at them, but Divines forbid they brag about it.
So, General Jonna's replanted herself in Hammerfell. That's a pleasant suprise, at least. I'd always assumed the Thalmor got her; it's generally a safe assumption to make after a curriculum vitae like that.
"And no spy hoping to gain my confidence would act half so ignorant, let me add. Give him the oar, please," she tells Saraa.
"I can't row," I say feebly. The shore is thankfully still in view – about as well as before, it seems, but we're a lot lower to the sea now, so we might be closer. So at least when I'm steering us toward Akavir and the corsairs, I'll know something's gone wrong. General Jonna is not about to take my no for an answer.
General Jonna. I would be sick off the side of the boat, if I'd eaten anything on shift.
She tries putting me through the paces. I manage to get the synchronization and motion as a matter of routine, if a sweaty one, but I can't adapt to the swells and I certainly can't talk and row at the same time. Water spills over the rim – not enough to capsize us, but definitely enough to make us very uncomfortable while we get the buckets. Jonna sighs, recalls Saraa to my oar, and tells me to just sit close by her.
This, I at least manage without getting any further water in the lifeboat.
"The Amir of Sentinel needs to know about this," she tells me, "and I'll be occupied with the fleet."
"So I'm telling him we were set upon by pirates with black soul gems."
"First, it's privateers," she says.
"A sea-borne rabble of one payment model or another," I say impatiently.
"Privateers." Her craggy face is staring toward shore like some weathered monument crafted specifically to give sailors the wiggins. "Pirates don't pick fights with the Ra Gada fleet. Pirates are after standard booty, or moon sugar if we have it – black gems aren't exactly an all-takers market. And if they were fool enough to go for us, they wouldn't know to time it so our arses are all hanging bare off the rail. Or visiting with the civilian captain, as the case may be."
"Then you think you were betrayed." I sincerely hope this is the second thing. If she's only now thinking of that little detail as something worth relaying, safe to say this fleet's in very deep trouble.
"There's your other crucial point," she confirms. "But it's we were betrayed. You included, if incidentally by their behavior. It suits someone out there – someone with a fair amount of necromancers by their side, let's add – that my men be cut down and made into raw materials. That's the object. Three guesses whose."
My gut feels like it's been plunged into ice water. I don't need to guess.
Theoretically it could be the Empire – the new Emperor, Jean-Mar Gwyll, is a tenuous heir to the throne who managed to get in over similarly tenuous heirs by dint of employing a mercenary guild where the others did not, and his views extended past the interests of his Breton duchy are rather hard to glean at this early stage – his duchy is landlocked, isn't it? yes, I can rest in the certain knowledge that it is – but I'm stumped for a third guess. And if it's the Empire, the elves have a hand in it regardless.
"So soon," I say. I think my tone has a distinct air of why me to it. General Jonna at least has the decency not to let any contempt for me show on her face.
"About as soon as I expected," she answers. "If only the Tripartite Council would say the same. Now? They might. And don't forget-" she gives me a quick and oddly reassuring flick of the eyes – "it's a shadow war yet. If they aren't coming out in person, they still think we've got a decent chance. And even on that count... they've miscalculated before."
Swaggering humility in that last sentence aside, I think she's deliberately avoiding the word Thalmor. It's a word that hits the ears a bit sharper than most, mutter or no mutter. And the lifeboat might just do a flip from all the excitability that word tends to generate.
"Don't worry," I hear myself say. "I'll deliver the message."
Deliver a message, they say. It'll be a quick nip, they say. And that's how they get you.
As my fears go, this one's rather unreasonable. I've done a good bit of messenger work in my time and never been roped into something momentous and irrevocable as a result. For that matter, I've seen more than my fair share of messengers deliver absolutely urgent news, and never heard a word about them after.
But there's the niggling thought that, not an hour ago, I was a prisoner of a sort, and since then my good luck's been fairly staggering. If the Divines are choosing me for some mission, then their timing could stand a good bit of work, but that doesn't change the events. And Jonna... the general of Red Ring can't be called second-rate in her schemes. If she has some grand design for me – I don't see how, but the possibility's certainly there – there's no chance I'd find out in time.
And there's the looming coast ahead. Hammerfell. Land of outcasts. I have a few uncomfortably clear ideas of how that might land me in trouble too deep to climb out of, especially now.
But there remains the small fact that the Thalmor are militarily attacking Hammerfell and no one as yet knows about it. Fail to deliver news like that, and an act of simple desertion will begin to look downright noble, won't it, Marcus Hayn?
I force my eyes to lock on to the five spires of Sentinel, now individually distinguishable on the horizon. Deliver a message to the Amir. Right. How much trouble can that be?
It doesn't matter. The fix is in.