Chapter 1.1 Bloody white sights
The star-covered sky gazed down upon the mountains in the chilly night, making sure that every creature slept, and that no animal had left the side of their mate. The trees together with the rocks covered the fire from watching eyes, all but two pairs who looked down on the watchman who'd been placed to make sure that no one crept close to the sleeping bandits.
The soft twang of the bow and the noise as the arrow pierced the watchman's throat, pinning him dead to the tree, went unnoticed by the people sleeping in the bedrolls. Thus allowing the owners of the two couple of eyes to creep unseen into the light of the fire.
She was the first one into the light, her bow now secured on her back and her dagger in hand. With her yellow khajiit eyes she looked back at the gray wolf following after her. He looked back at at the woman, and with an understanding that only they shared, each of them approached a sleeping bandit.
Simply pausing to note that the man was a nord, she slit his throat as quietly as possible, while the wolf used his claws for the same purpose on another man. In this manner they continued until the last four sleeping bandits were dead, but she still waited for a while before standing up straight, and giving a smile to her companion.
"Say Gladio, you don't think these might have been the people we were looking for?" she asked the wolf and turned from him to search the pockets of the man she'd just killed. He answered with two quick barks, and a faint smile appeared on the khajiits' lips.
"Why I think you're right, just look at what I found in this ones pocket," She held the black amulet she'd found up into the air for Gladio to see, and he gave her an expression that could only be interpreted as a smug smile. Then she looked around the little clearing, and grabbed a couple of sacks lying by the fire. Beneath the ancient pines she then stopped to kneel by each bandit to remove their equipment and stuff it in the bags.
Most of their armour lay on the ground next to them, but it still was tedious work, and when Ekali went to recover the one arrow she had used, she was forced to break the shaft to have any chance of getting it out of the watchman. He slumped to the hard ground. The ground on the side of the mountain was tundra, the ice mixed with earth so frozen it did not even soften during summer. The Jerall Mountains never did attract much warmth though.
She undressed the dead man and put his fur armour in the sacks as well, then the female took him under his arms and dumped him in a pile with his companions. She used snow to extinguish the fire, and when she picked up the now filled sacks she sunk a couple inches into the snow from the weight.
"Come on boy, we gotta get going," Ekali said, and with the wolf at her heels she began the trek into the forest again. Her eyes glanced up into the sky after a little while, noting the storm clouds coming further towards the mountains for every hour and she shivered, though not from the cold.
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It was the thunder and the hard, cold wind that first told of the coming of the snowstorm. Gladio barked unhappily, and the woman whom was having a hard time staying on her feet looked around for a deep enough pile of snow. She bent down by a tree, and set to dig a hole with her hands. Understanding her intention, Gladio barked and came forth to help. She backed away, giving the wolf room to dig.
It didn't take very long with Gladios' help, but when the khajiit crawled into the shelter after him the storm had picked up it's pace and snow whirled past outside. There was so much of it you couldn't see your hand if you held it out in front of you, and the cold would have been excruciating for most people.
The cave of snow was barely big enough to sit in, and she took her bedroll from where she'd fastened it on her back, blocking the entrance with the sacks. Ekali then put the bedroll in the bottom of the cave, and laid down on it to wait out the storm. Accustomed to the situation, Gladio crouched down besides her, and she put her arms around him so that they could provide each other with warmth. After that, there wasn't much to do, and a silence soon fell upon the the snow cave.
