Best Laid Plans
A D Gray-Man and Skyrim Crossover
This was an awful idea.
Lavi wondered more days than was strictly necessary how the Empire was managing to survive this war. It certainly wasn't their ability to make smart decisions. At least not that he could see.
It had boggled his mind for the longest time how they had lost to the Thalmor and actually agreed to sign the White-Gold Concordat. The entire thing had been a major botch. Yes, the battle of Red Ring had done lasting damage, but not that much of it. It wasn't a matter of tactical surrender for lack of strength to fight off the Aldmeri Dominion. It was a matter of bad calls and poor leadership from someone who really shouldn't have been Emperor. To expect that banning the worship of one of the Divines and surrendering when there was no need would not create waves was a fool's thinking.
But then again, people were known idiots. Hoping for better was hoping for too much.
He was almost rooting for the Stormcloaks to win, if not for the fact that he was supposed to remain neutral. Blatant stupidity, however, made it really hard not to take sides.
And blatant stupidity was how he found himself here, up on the godforsaken, northernmost shores of Skyrim, freezing his ass off on a high cliff overlooking the Sea of Ghosts between Dawnstar and Winterhold. The only thing even slightly tolerable was that at least his escorts were smart enough to pick an old, abandoned lighthouse to camp in, rather than flimsy tents on the open mountainside being their only source of shelter from the cold.
That one, little blessing, however, was not one to last.
After spending a night around a fire and cramped in with several of their horses, which helped keep things a little warmer during the night, they tacked up the animals early in the morning and headed out just as the sun was rising and bathed the land in faint gold light. Sunlight or not, it was frigid outside. Even hunching over close to his horse did very little to keep the redhead from feeling the sting of the arctic land.
Couldn't just take the main road further south. Nooooo. They had to go the hardest, coldest, most unenjoyable route in existence. Not to mention dangerous. North was where the big beasties lived; snow bears, snow sabres, frost trolls, not to mention temperamental giants and mammoths that were far less tame than those in Whiterun tundra. Even the most rugged of bandits avoided the north if they could, most of the time. Those that didn't usually ended up dead and buried under several feet of snow with no one the wiser that they were ever there, or dragged off into some Falmer den by the pincers of some Chaurus and mutilated into tiny pieces. He didn't even want to get started on the Dwemer ruins. Not to mention Necromancer cults always more than willing to take in wanderers, always willing for more fresh corpses to manipulate with their magick.
Nowhere was safe anywhere between the Hjaalmarch, the Pale, and Winterhold regions. Absolutely nowhere. And yet they were expecting him, a historian, not even a hardened soldier, to go traipsing through without anything bad happening.
He must have royally pissed off someone up above, to be slapped with this kind of cruel punishment, and he barely even believed in the Divines. Maybe that was his problem. Faithlessness. Maybe this was how the Gods punished non-believers in their own way.
Somehow that just made him feel like believing even less.
The barely perceptible warmth of the sun was fleeting as they marched on by horseback and clouds overtook the sky, casting the land into poor lighting, and, predictably, the snow started to fall again. As if there wasn't already enough snow.
Only here could rising boulders and hills of ice be found in just as much abundance as the rocky cliffs themselves, and Lavi hated it. It wasn't bad enough that he had to be aware of what a precarious place this was to be, but the nervousness of the men was contagious to both him and the animals. Even the sight of a mammoth, half-frozen in ice still standing, its side sprinkled in Dwarven bolts that were probably centuries old, was a horrifying view.
How easily could that also be them, frozen within blocks of cold, lost and then found again perhaps hundreds of years later?
Too easily.
Was this mission really worth so much that their lives were worth risking so sparingly?
Just walking between spires of rising ice was making everyone in the traveling party anxious, and when one of the blocks suddenly creaked and shifted, threatening to crush them between it and another wall of ice, both man and horse startled and picked up the pace, even though the torrent of snow was blinding and made it nearly impossible to see more than ten feet ahead.
A roar and the sudden rise of a shape just as large as any horse announced a snow bear that they had been too blinded to know to avoid, the snow and wind whipping in their eyes, and they didn't escape without a casualty.
Lavi was only glad that it hadn't been him.
Everyone was glad to be out of the ice ravines and along the open shore of the sea, but every so often the rising ice to their right would shift loudly or a head-sized chunk would flake off and clatter, momentarily spooking them and causing thoughts of running, just in case an avalanche started. The College came into view from below, but Lavi was wistfully aware that they would not be finding a warm room and food in Winterhold city's inn this night, or any other building there for that matter, instead passing under the arch and continuing on their way.
The further they progressed, the more he knew it was only a matter of time before something happened. Luck was always a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, and so far they'd been having too much of it. He knew better than to hope, and he was right.
As they were passing through more ice ravines, he saw something up ahead, and wasn't the only one to notice.
When they drew close enough to examine it properly, a man leapt down off of his horse to inspect it, the corpse of a person freshly slain.
The soldier turned the corpse over, looking at it more closely, before he glanced up again.
"Clean cut. This was done by a blade, not a beast."
Lavi's horse sidled nervously, and he couldn't help but glance up the walls of ice on either side of them, that was forcing them almost single-file. Perfect place for an ambush. Perfect place to cut off escape and rain down Oblivion from above. Impossible place to defend themselves from against an enemy.
Oh, how he hated when it all snapped together, because he was right.
One of the horses brayed pain and panic as arrows lodged into both its hide and the rider, who jolted and pulled the reigns too far to one side, toppling both himself and his steed over and becoming half-crushed under the flailing animal. Another man cried out and fell, and everything fell into chaos. Ice and stone avalanched behind them and blocked their previous route, forcing them to go forward, but the horses were too frightened and just as blinded by the snow to choose a proper direction as a group of people dropped down from above, effectively cutting off the other direction with their own mass.
Lavi cursed and unlatched a warhammer from the saddle, bludgeoning one of the men - a bandit, from what he could tell - in the head, caving it in like a hammer to a melon.
Another man charged in and he pulled back on the reigns, his horse rearing and kicking out, forcing the man to retreat while Lavi spun his horse around and kicked it into action.
He glanced off to the side, but the other men, the soldiers, were already being overwhelmed. Sure, they cut down one or two bandits, left a few more with wounds to remember, but they couldn't last. They were outnumbered, tired from travel, and had been ambushed none the wiser until it was too late. There was no hope of fending off the attackers, and he had no intention of waiting for anyone else only to be slain because of it. First rule of a Bookman - self-preservation above all else.
He galloped by them and barely dodged a blade on one side, only for another bandit to grab him around the waist and try to drag him off his horse, grabbing his weapon so he couldn't swing it. He steered his horse partially sideways as it struggled to run and rammed the man into one of the walls of ice, knocking him under-hoof to get trampled as his horse kept going.
An arrow lodged in his shoulder and he stifled a bark of pain, but didn't stop or let himself jerk back the reins and jeopardize his own escape, focusing on ahead and whatever was behind him be damned.
"Come on, you can do it," he breathed encouragingly, his horse having trouble up the slope, but still managing to plow ahead of the bandits. "Just a little more, come on." They broke past the ravine and onto open ground, heading up towards where several pillars and a stone platform stood. "That's it, come on!"
He grinned victory as he glanced back, the bandits having much more trouble trying to pursue through the snow and falling behind. It was very short-lived triumph, the redhead turning around just in time for a solid white shape to pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, and lunge for him.
The only thing he had time for was the declare quite profusely, "FUCK!", before a solid blow hit his head, and the only thing he was awake long enough to be aware of was landing in a pile of snow.