Ulfric strode to the front of the column. His men parted before him and Ygritte was a half-step behind. He came to a stop and stared at the man who'd stumbled onto his war-band. He wore dark leathers and a hooded travel cloak, one meant for Cyrodill's mild winters rather than the frigid Skyrim weather. Snow had crusted on his shoulders and his face was pale, the skin around the eyes slightly sunken in a sign of fatigue.

But the eyes themselves peered at him with sharp intelligence and something more. Those eyes were as blue as Nordic ice but ringed in the center by flecks of hawk-eye gold, an unnatural combination that made the hairs at the back of his neck rise. The face itself however, was undoubtedly Imperial - no hiding those arrogant cheekbones or that pursed lip.

"Who…are you?" Ulfric asked finally.

"Caius."

"An Imperial name." Ygritte mused, "I bet you must have some long fancy family name to go with that."

He turned towards her and raked his gaze up and down her body with a lascivious glint in his eye. Ulfric restrained the sudden, surprising, urge to hit the man somewhere painful.

"Just plain, simple Caius, if it please you."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Well then," Caius blinked innocently, "That'd be a real problem, wouldn't it?"

Something about that tone struck him as wrong.

Ygritte heard that tone as well. She took a step back – not in retreat, but to give her some room to sling that massive axe cocked against her shoulder."He's probably an Imperial spy," she said in a casual tone, "I say we cut his head off and throw him down the nearest hole."

Caius eyed her angrily, "Lady I just spent three bloody days clambering up mountains to avoid an Imperial road-block. I've got icicicles in places I didn't even know could get icicled!"

"Well then, plain, simple, Caius" Ygritte said sweetly, "would you care to explain how you got these weapons? An Imperial dagger and a Thalmor knife - neither are factions we Nords care to see in these parts."

"What can I say? They were on sale."

"Or given to you by your masters." Ulfric remarked dryly.

"If I was an Imperial – or a Thalmor – spy, I wouldn't be stupid enough to carry an elven knife. Because then I'd questioned by people like you." There'd been something there, a savage little twist as he'd said the word Thalmor like it was poison in his mouth. Ulfric stared at him, studying him in a different light. It was hard to see because his face was so pale, but Ulfric could make out scarring on the man's face. One across the bridge of his nose, a sideways V-shaped mark on either cheek, a curved line that plunged across his forehead and a deeper one that stretched across his jugular. The scars were barely noticeable at first, just thin silvery lines white with age. The weapon that had made those must have had a keen edge to leave such delicate calling cards behind.

Ulfric had a good idea just what kind of weapon had been used.


"Where in Oblivion did he come from?" Captain Armont growled. One second the plan had been going smoothly, the next some dark-clad stranger had blundered down from the slopes and right into the Stormcloaks. The traveler couldn't have come at a worst time. Ulfric's army stood frozen, only half-way into the kill box of Tullius's ambush.

One of the four Justiciars stationed with his cohort – Armont hadn't bothered to learn his name - raised a thin brow, "It appears he came over the mountains."

The captain glared at the Justiciar, doing nothing to hide his extreme unhappiness at working with an elf "Shouldn't you be doing your spell?"

"We are casting the Veil. It is a continuous spell, which means we must stay in position around your men."

Armont frowned, "What if you run out of magicka?"

"That would be unfortunate, but so long as the four of us work in concert, we can keep the spell going indefinitely."

Captain Armont turned back to watch the army below them. "Stand ready boys" He said quietly to the men, "This could get messy."

He could have shouted the order – the Justiciars had assured him that the Veil filtered all sound and light that left the box – but standing on an exposed hill in clear view of the Stormcloaks below them, Armont found himself not wishing to test that claim.

He waited with a held breath, eyes riveted on the pass. He wasn't alone, everyone's eyes were fixed on the pass, you could've cut the air with a knife, the tension was so thick.

So no one was paying attention to the slope that the man had slid down. If they had, they might have seen a brow-coated leg rise menacingly over the lip of the hill.

Many of the greatest battles in history had swung on simple luck – a unit failed to notice a signal, a stray dog's barking that ruined a sneak attack, unexpected twists of fate that sent even the most well-laid plans into shambles. In the case of the Battle of Pale Pass, the twist of fate lay with a handful of hungry Frostbite spiders that had tracked a single man down a mountain slope – and come across even larger prey.

The Justiciar positioned at the back corner of the Imperial company heard a faint scritch-scratch. He turned and blinked in surprise at the spider staring straight at him, almost like it could see him. An absurd notion, the Veil blocked all visible light and sound.

But the Frostbites, adapted to the cold, didn't see visible light – what good was light when blizzards often created whiteout conditions anyway? No, it was far more useful to see in terms of heat and right now the spider was staring at the largest buffet of heat blurs it had ever seen. The Frostbite leapt through the Veil and pounced on the surprised Altmer. Its fangs sank deep through the spell-warded coat, injecting potent toxins into the Altmer's body as he screamed.

The Thalmor did what any surprised, panicked spellcaster would do when a large insect is chomping down on one – blast that damned critter with a fistful of lightning. This was bad, for Veils functioned exactly like mass Invisibility spells.

The blast of lightning burned a hole through the Frostbite and ripped through the Veil. The Illusion magic wavered, the weaves coming undone by the interference of the Destruction magic.

The six Frostbites remaining heard the panicked screams of their prey and swarmed forward.


Screams suddenly rent the air above the pass. Screams followed by a blast of lightning. The Stormcloaks stared in surprise as an entire company of Imperial Legion soldiers appeared on the hills in front of them. The soldiers were fighting a small pack of Frostbites – or rather, viciously stabbing, hammering, and crushing them frantically. The poor spiders had been overly ambitious and were squashed quickly. It was only then that the Imperials became aware that their Veil was gone.

For a moment a tense equilibrium was established. The Imperials stared at the Stormcloaks.

The Stormcloaks stared at the Imperials.

Then somebody in the Stormcloak line just had to yell "AMBUSH!" and the whole thing went to Oblivion in a coffin. The Imperial captain in charge of that cohort on the hill fell back on the age old adage. When in doubt…

"Attack!"

Trumpets blared and a hundred legion soldiers were charging down the hill. They weren't alone – with shimmering lights, more companies appeared, as if they'd summoned out of thin air in the hills around them.


General Tullius was not watching his carefully orchestrated ambush fall apart – he was too busy trying to save it.

"Tell Captain Armont to pull his men back into a tight formation! They're getting slaughtered without a proper shieldwall and are blocking our mages from casting!"

"Get Claudicus's men moving down that hill to join up in a reinforced block, I want them marching towards the Stormcloaks as soon as possible, but tell them to leave some space for our mages to work."

"Send word to Captains Jeriss and Veris: reshuffle your lines, get back in range of the Stormcloaks, as soon as Armont's company is clear, open up with the fireballs, don't hold anything back."

The mages turned and started speaking urgently into shimmering green orbs suspended between their hands – communicating with the captains.

Even with instantaneous communication, assuming the captains acted promptly, it would still take minutes for Armont to spread the word to his scattered cohort, and more minutes for the twins' cohorts to reposition.

Minutes the ambush didn't have. He'd hoped the Stormcloaks would have given in to battle-lust and charged Armont's company – that at least would have drawn them deeper into the ambush. Instead it had been the reverse – the Stormcloaks had maintained discipline and Armont had let his usual aggressive nature get the best of him.

Worse, some of the Stormcloaks' spellcasters were spraying frost on the road as the army fell back. The ice would make the ground damned impossible to stand on, even if Armont got his formation back together, they'd be slowed to a crawl as they stumbled across the ice.

And then he caught sight of Captain Lucilla's formation – on the move. "By the Dvines," he muttered, not knowing whether to be inspired…or horrified, "She's trying to follow the bloody plan."


At her own position on the lower hills, Captain Lucilla had been gripped by the same temporary paralysis that had affected her fellow officers. This hadn't been part of the plan, they were supposed to sliding neatly behind the surprised Stormcloaks. Only the place her cohort was supposed to be in was instead occupied by half the bloody Stormcloak army.

Something had to be done, before all of Ulfric's forces slipped away. The plan had called for her and Torvg's companies to move down the hills and form a rearguard that would block off Ulfric's escape. Terrifyingly enough, she saw no better alternative than to try to follow that plan.

"Wedge formation." Captain Lucilla ordered, surprised at how steady her voice was. The block formation shifted around, reforming into a loose triangle of men and women, with her at the tip. She stared down at the sea of blue swarming the valley pass and tried not to think too much about what she was about to do.

Then she took a deep breath and sounded the advance.

The company started down the hill at a fast trot. The principle of a wedge formation worked just like the mechanics of a spear's tip or a sword's blade. A single soldier was the tip of a large triangle of packed men. The single-man tip would open a tiny hole in the enemy formation, as the wedge formation drove deeper, the gap would be forced wider.

The plan had called for her and Torvg's companies to be charging down the hills in tandem. It relied on them getting behind the Stormcloaks before they even knew what was happening – when they'd still be reeling from the massive barrage of fireballs from the battlemages.

Now they were picking up momentum, plunging down the hill like a living juggernaut. Behind her the rattle and clack of metal lorica sounded like rolling thunder.

The plan had explicitly stated that by the time the Blues got their wits together and ordered a retreat, the two legion companies would be joined in a solid shieldwall with plenty of numbers to hold the Stormcloak retreat.

She looks at the five-hundred strong army she was about to charge into.

The plan had said nothing about plunging into the middle of a hostile army and hoping for the best.

Divines, that's a lot of angry rebels she thought and then she impacts with the Stormcloaks and all her thoughts reduce to the here-and-now.

Upon striking the enemy, the formation tightens; the men compact and lock shields, presenting a solid barrier along the flanks of the point. She smashes shield-first into a large Stormcloak Nord. He's knocked to the side and the man behind her stabs him in the gut as the wedge presses deeper.

But the tip of the wedge is alone in combat, there's no one on either side of her to lock shields with, just the men behind her, and the Stormcloaks all around her. Her short sword, too short to duel with is now so deft and maneuverable in the heavy press of bodies. She thrusts out from under her shield, catching another Stormcloak in the gut. The stench of entrails fills the air, hot blood spatters on her shield and her feet.

He falls, her feet trod over his body and then it's onto the next. She drives forward into the press of twisting, writhing bodies, pushed on not just by her own body but by the man behind her, and the man behind him. Behind her, left and right, her fellow legion troopers widen the gap, shunting the Stormcloaks before them to the sides, a rock that forces water to flow around it.

At first resistance is light. That quickly changes as surprise wears off and more and more Stormcloaks turn towards her. Footing is quickly turning slippery, between the blood and churned snow, even the thick hobnails of her boots are having trouble gripping on the uneven carpet of dead and dying soldiers.

She blocks an axe blow with her shield and stabs low. The wounded Stormcloak staggers to the side cradling his guts and she takes another step forward. A giant of a Nord to her left comes at her, swinging his hammer overhead.

Compacted as she is with her fellow soldiers, there's nowhere for her to dodge. She sets her shield up high and catches the blow. The iron-head drives through her shield, just below her braced arm. The impact drags her shield down low with the hammer's own downward motion.

So she stabs over it, two feet of legion steel ramming through the toughened hide and iron-scales of his armor.

He bellows and staggers back, but his hammer's still embedded in her shield and it's ripped from her grasp. Someone thrusts at her with a two-handed sword, she chops at it with her sword, hammering the heavy iron blade into the ground – but her shoulder erupts in pain as a different Stormcloak drives a spear beneath her shoulder pauldron. As she turns to deal with that, something else clubs her on the helmet.

The world erupts in white and pain and blood from a scalp wound is dripping down her face, blinding one of her eyes. She drops to her knees, unable to balance herself to stand and there's a Nord devil with blood smeared on her face, mouth gaping in a banshee scream that curdles the blood. She has an iron mace in her hands. It's caked in blood and white flecks of bone.

Wonder if it'll hurt, she thinks.

-and a Legion shield drops into place over her as the pair of troopers behind her come forward. The mace head makes a loud crack as it strikes the wood, the soldier holding the shield grunts in effort. He stabs out low, just like they're trained, catching the Nord in the gut, where the armor's thinner and the wounds are more painful.

A hand slaps onto the back of her lorica as the other man drags her back from the front. The man who shielded her becomes the new tip and the wedge grinds on.

But it can't last, it won't last. The wedge has punched deep into the Stormcloak ranks, but it's also enveloped itself in Blues. A hundred soldiers, surrounded by an army of five hundred. Her men are fighting on two flanks and more and more Stormcloaks are circling around to the rear of the formation.

The weight of numbers will press her company to the breaking point. Once unit cohesion breaks down, the men will be routed.

They can last another five seconds, ten at the most. She's trying to think of something, some order to give that'll save her cohort, but her skull's pounding, and the world of blood and smashing steel is tilting dizzily around her –

-and then a crash of metal on flesh as Torvg's own wedge slices into the Stormcloaks from the opposite hill. His cohort starts pressing towards her men. The sight of friendly faces in this maelstrom of a fight enlivens her troops. There's hope now, if they can link up with Torvg, form a proper line of shields they'll just be attacked on two sides instead of four.

A/N: Due to length, I had to chop this one in half and part two should be up soon. I want to say thanks to all the people who took the time to review, and please, feel free to keep them coming :)

Cohort - (roughly analogous to company, it just sounds more Legiony)

Lorica - Steel armor made from segmented plates.