Soft crackling woke me, as did the knowledge that I was warm all over, even though I could feel the snow pressing against my bare legs. I swallowed hard as the smell and feel of a small fire washed over me, and tried not to tremble as I opened my eyes. The first thing I noticed was that the snow had stopped. The second thing—besides the fire—was that sitting across from me, watching me with sharp blue eyes, was a male Nord.

His pale gold hair was pulled back from his face, tied at the base of his neck with a strip of leather. He was strongly featured, handsome even though his face was set with stern, angry lines, his mouth turned down in a scowl. He was dressed in furs, as most that lived in Solstheim were, though his were of expert make. When he saw that I was awake, he picked up a mug of some liquid from a flat stone in front of him and passed it around to me. "Drink it. All of it. And then you've got some explaining to do, Taima Shadow." Even though his voice was harsh with anger, I could hear almost musical tones in his words…I knew that voice.

"Adian Thunder?" I asked, and meekly bowed my head when he nodded, eyes still cold. I covered my hesitation and worry by taking a cautious sip of the liquid. Mead, the god's own drink, flowed down my throat, warmed by the fire, honey sweet and smooth, but very strong, warming me inside and out. I couldn't stop a satisfied noise in my throat as I drained the mug, then passed it back to the big male.

He snorted to himself as he accepted it back, storing it away before leaning back against one of the monoliths. "Glad you enjoyed it. Donated by one of the werewolves who frequent Thrisk, the mead hall," he still spoke with a bite to his words, though his anger was held in check. "Now. What the hell were you doing out here? You could have died."

I nodded, "I wanted to die."

Whatever he was expecting, that wasn't it. "You what!" he yelped, straightening. "Why! Does living in a town and pack of your own species offend you that much?"

I shook my head, "There's nothing I want more. But I can't. I'm dangerous."

Adian snorted again, "We're all dangerous, Taima. It never bothered you before. What happened?"

I swallowed, and murmured, "I've…I've got bloodlust."

"We all do, Taima," Adian said softly, his eyes puzzled. Then his expression cleared, "You think you've got kill-frenzy." When I blinked, turning my gaze up to his eyes for one moment, he elaborated, "Bloodlust that won't go away; the need, the desire, to kill every living thing in sight." I nodded at his description, and Adian shook his head, "Taima…you don't have it. One look in your eyes is enough to deny it. Besides, when you'd realized what you'd done, you fled. If you truly had kill-frenzy, you wouldn't have recognized that what you did was wrong, or if you did, you wouldn't care. I've seen it before; believe me, you don't have it."

I was stunned into speechlessness a moment at his words, then shook my head, "I wish I could believe you. But I can't. Not after what I did…" I trailed off, remembering the nine dismembered bodies and the snow stained red with blood, and found I couldn't go on.

"What you did…?" Adian Thunder prompted, pulling a common pack into his lap before rooting around in it…he pulled out a stalk of saltrice with a noise of satisfaction. He held it close to the fire, warming it, then passed it over to me. I took a tentative bite, laughing inwardly at the irony; the only thing I had eaten the day of my Silver Trial had been a stalk of saltrice….

The sweetness in my mouth seemed to loosen my tongue, for I found myself speaking before I could think, "I killed nine last night, Adian. I…I woke up and I was thinking like a wolf, and some of the other werewolves were holding them in Hrothmund's Bane and I…I killed them. Tore some of them to pieces, gutted a few…" I felt sick, now that I was speaking the details, and so I fell silent once more, swallowing the saltrice, trying to settle my stomach.

Lines that had creased Adian's forehead eased at the telling of my tale, and he shook his head, smiling slightly, "You still don't have it, Taima." When I tried to protest again, he raised up a hand, eyes firm, "Look at it this way; for eight nights you've been unconscious, unable to move. But you still changed to and from wolf form, and you still had bloodlust…and you weren't able to sate it. So one night's bloodlust carried into the next, until…tonight. When you were awake and able to move. Not only did you have this night's bloodlust, but also the bloodlust from eight previous nights. Small wonder the werewolf took over your mind!"

"Oh." That…made sense, as far as the bloodlust was concerned. The full force of what Adian was saying hit me a moment later, an I sank back against the monolith. "Oh!" He had been right in the first place; I didn't have kill-frenzy or whatever he called incurable bloodlust. I looked up, holding his gaze, for the first time since I saw that he was sitting across a fire from me. I smiled weakly, "I guess…I've been a bit foolish."

He laughed, "No. Just jumped to a few wrong conclusions…understandable conclusions, given the circumstances. I understand, perhaps more than you will ever know." He fell silent, gazing into the fire, watching the hypnotic flames dance over small sticks and pieces of…what the…?

I gestured to the fire, "How did you manage to get ice to burn?"

Adian glanced at it, then laughed once again, "Magicka," he admitted. "I found you half dead from the cold, and knew that a fire would warm you faster than anything…but there was no fuel. So I summoned fire, if you want to call it that, or casted a very weak Fireball. Handy little spell I learned when I was still a Skaal warrior…" he trailed off, and shrugged.

"Speaking of which, how did you find me? I mean, two werewolves passed within a few feet of me during the blizzard and they didn't see me, so…"

He looked up sharply, "You mean you didn't hear them? The choir of horns?"

Now that he mentioned it… "I thought I'd dreamed them," I admitted.

Adian snorted, but continued, voice soft with awe, "I was on my way back from the Skaal village when I heard the news, and so I went to search the far shores, because I was closest. It was a little after midnight when I heard them, all the way across the island. And yet I heard them as clearly as if they were but twenty feet away. The great-horns and the ram's-horns and the royal fanfare… And then all but one faded, and that was a hunting horn, a ram's-horn. I heard it winding far off, and followed the sound to this glacier. From there…it led me to you; no easy feat, for you were well hidden."

It was my turn to frown, though in thought, not in anger, "That's odd. I don't think I've ever heard of something like that happening and I can't even begin to guess how."

The male Nord shrugged one broad shoulder, "Nor I. And at first I thought that it was my imagination, but when they led me true…I don't know. And now you say that you heard the opening choir of horns, yes? I wonder if anyone else did. Perhaps Elder or one of the older werewolves could offer some insight…or I might need to go back and talk with Korst Wind-Eye again." He smiled ruefully, "I'm talking him now, ten years after the Skaal banished me for being a werewolf, then I ever did when I was growing up."

I grinned, appreciating what could well be counted as a joke, and then shifted closer to the fire, shivering slightly in the cold. Adrian looked over at me, and the last of his anger evaporated. "Here," he shrugged out of his fur-trimmed cloak, passing it around the fire to me. "That'll keep you warm enough until we get back to the Gathering Place." He grinned even as he stood, "Though perhaps it's not right to call it the Gathering Place anymore. What we're going to call the town is still up for debate…very loud debate."

I laughed outright at that, standing as well, "Don't tell me, let me guess; everyone has a different idea of what to call it, and they explain their reasoning to everyone else at full voice." When he nodded, a puzzled crease touching his forehead, I grinned, "I could just hear the pack arguing when I woke up in the cave yesterday." Hircine, only yesterday? So much has happened since then…I shook my head to myself, and glanced down at my bare feet, "Oh, this is going to be a pleasant journey…" I muttered.

Adian followed my gaze downward and winced with me, "No kidding. If I had a pair of boots remotely close to your size, I'd let you borrow them, but…" he trailed off, then brightened, "Wait here. I'll be back in a little while, with luck." With that he wiggled through the two monoliths and began trotting across the landscape, and was soon lost to the vast whiteness of new snow dumped by the blizzard. There was little for me to do but sit down and stare at the fire, waiting for him to return. Patience — ironically enough — came easily to werewolves, probably another aspect of the hunter, one that we usually ignored.

In an hour or so he was back, a smug smile on his face and a dead Bristleback across his shoulders. "You're not going to like this," he called over as he slung down the dead boar to one side of the fire, moving close to me. Pulling a small knife from his belt, he began to hack off strips of the Bristleback's tough hide, "I'm not even sure where I learned it; logic says the Skaal, but I keep wanting to say that Boromor Elder taught me. Anyways, one of the very few good uses for Bristleback leather, besides tying things together, is for resistance against frost…"

"You're right," I interrupted, "I don't like the sound of this."

"Too bad," he said in a cheerful tone, laying one of the strips of hide over my ankle.

"Adian, my feet are going to smell like Tusked Bristlebacks for months!"

As he began to wind the leather over my foot, he asked, "Would you rather they smelled like Bristlebacks for months or froze off?"

I snorted, but didn't protest as he bandaged my foot in very raw Bristleback leather. "I'll do the other," I said hastily as he made to begin with the other foot.

Adian shook his head, eyes still on his task, "I can do it better, faster, and no doubt neater than you can. Trust me." In a moment, he had finished, and sank back on his haunches to survey his work with satisfaction, "That'll hold until we reach the Gathering Place," he muttered, then offered a hand to help me stand up.

I made a face as I let him pull me to my feet, still staring at the unlikely bandages. Then I sighed, "Well, if something decides to gnaw on my feet, you can pay the healer to fix them up."

A smile tugged at his lips, though his voice was tinged with mock-pain as he said, "So glad that you have so much confidence in the pack to protect you."

"It's the pack I'm worried about. You know how much some of those elder werewolves love the taste of Bristleback jerky." I retorted, taking a few test steps forward to get used to the feel of still-raw hide wrapped around my feet. At least I couldn't feel the snow and ice underfoot, a small blessing. "But that reminds me; all my clothing burned with my cabin…"

"Talk to one of the females," he said, distracted as he helped me wiggle between the monoliths, "I think Eponis White-Heart has a house near the fort…she might be willing to lend you something."

"And how do you expect me to pay her back?" I demanded, stride extending to match his own long steps.

Adian was silent for a long time, then shrugged, "I wouldn't worry too much about it. Once we figure out who's going to do what in the town, you two can figure out a trade of some kind, I'm sure."

"Once we figure out who's going to do what," I repeated flatly. "And it has occurred to you that I have no skills that would be useful in an actual town?"

Adian stopped dead in his track and spun to stare at me, his temper flaring again, "Who told you that?" He demanded, holding a hand up to forestall my arguments, "No, I don't want to know. Taima Shadow, you are the last werewolf I'd accuse of having no skills. Who was it that organized us less than a fortnight ago? Whose plan was it that killed the necromancer? Yes, Flyer killed him; I thought you knew.

"And who has always kept tabs on the rogue werewolves, just because it was the right thing to do? And do you remember the time a very brave but very young black werewolf held a powerful rogue at bay, from dusk until dawn, just to keep him from Fort Frostmoth, whose walls had been breeched?" His eyes softened as he shook his head, "I will never forget that time, the first time I saw you. Pelt bloodied, panting hard from exhaustion, but eyes triumphant, the rogue sprawled before you, knocked out, and behind you, the fort silhouetted in the gray dawn…" He gave a crooked smile, "And then, seeing all of us males converge towards you, you turned on your tail and fled."

The memory was a vivid one for me, but I'd never heard it from Adian Thunder's point of view. It had happened much as he said; I was young, had only been a werewolf for a year, but that year was enough to give me some experience of the world I now lived in, and what I had seen had made me…arrogant is the best word, I suppose. I had a taste of power and immortality in my mouth, and I forgot that I was weaker than many. When I saw the werewolf loping towards the colony…I thought it would be easy to hold him off, to stop him from getting inside the breech.

It hadn't been. But I managed. And in the process, had learned that I was not a god. And so in that cool gray dawn, when I got my first glimpse of what would become my pack, all I could think of was the fight I had just come from and the worry that I'd have to fight all those big males, too. So I did what was the logical thing at the time: I fled and prayed that they wouldn't follow me. I didn't know that they were 'good' werewolves, like me, but later, when I encountered them again, I learned otherwise.

I shook my head roughly to clear the memories, and pointed out, "Everything that you just mentioned has revolved around just one job: freelance adventurer. In case you haven't noticed, adventurers don't do very well in normal towns, where they have to have a normal job."

"Who are we to say what the gods call normal?" Adian asked, his voice not carrying beyond my own ears, "I know that to Hircine the Hunter, we are the ones who are normal, not those living in the forts and cities." He sighed, "And you keep forgetting that because we are not 'normal,' neither will our town be. Besides," and here his eyes gleamed with an unidentifiable emotion, "who ever said you had to run a tavern or shop? Think about it."

With that cryptic statement, he fell silent, concentrating on the miles before us. He only spoke to tell me to stop while he scouted ahead, and even then used as few words as possible. It seemed as though he meant it when he said he wanted me to think about it…I sighed and sank onto a rock during one of his bouts of scouting the trail ahead, using a stick to trace patterns in the snow. What did he mean; I didn't have to run a tavern or shop? That was all there was in cities, right? Shops selling everything from armor to books, pawnbrokers, inns, and of course, bars and taverns. There were plenty of jobs there, I mused, but I knew better than anyone that I really didn't have the skills to sell things, nor to make or to find anything worth selling…

Well, no, that wasn't quite right: the fact that all there was in cities were shops and taverns. There were guards, too, who either walked the streets, breaking up fights, or stood atop the walls in case of attack. Did Adian mean for me to be a guard? I smiled at the thought, and then discarded it; it would be better than being a shopkeeper, but not by much. What else?

Nobles, yes, nobles to spare in any town. Commoners who did what needed doing. I blanched at the thought of either of them, turning my thoughts back to jobs in normal cities. Priests, either with the Temple of the Tribunal or with the Imperial Cult. I had to smile at that thought; werewolves, as priests in either of those? The stars were more likely to shine purple in a green sky. But then again, if we were to establish a shrine to Hircine…I shook my head; no, that would be the job of the few of Hircine's Hounds still alive.

So what did that leave? I felt as though I was missing something major, that should have been obvious to me. Perhaps…transportation services? Surely, we would need to contact a shipmaster to bring us supplies from the outside world; even Adian couldn't believe that we could be self-sufficient, not on this island. Well, I amended, we could, but it wouldn't be a nice existence, without the luxuries we had lived without for years.

But why shouldn't we have Cyrodiilic brandy for a hundred drakes, not the two hundred it was at the fort, or exclusive potions the likes of which I had once seen in an alchemist's shop in Vivec, or even clothing made of silk and jewelry with sapphires and diamonds? Raven Rock had access to such things, but through the cargo of ships. The fort, housing warriors, usually stocked that which they'd need, nothing more, and the Skaal village…well, the Skaal were barbarians. They preferred to live as they had for centuries.

But as for us, well, though we were werewolves, most of us had once enjoyed at least one of those luxuries; it had been the brandy for me. After we were cast out, we had to sacrifice those things…now that we would have our own town, why shouldn't we be allowed to have them back again?

I snarled to myself, and snapped my stick in half. This was not what I was supposed to be thinking about! I was supposed to be trying to figure out what skills I had that would be worthwhile to a town of werewolves, and what I could do in said town to pay off my debts, at the very least.

I was still trying to remember what obvious job there was in various towns when Adian returned, a smile on his face and a half-dozen gray wolf pelts hanging over his shoulder, dangling down his back. "Excellent hunting this far north," he said by way of greeting, settling the pelts more securely over his shoulders, "I did hate to have to kill so many of the wolves, though…magnificent creatures; they might as well be our lesser cousins or our distant ancestors. But you can't fight, not in your condition, and I didn't want to take any chances. Come on, it's just two or three more miles to the Gathering Place…"

I nodded, and stood up from my rock, tossing the broken pieces of the stick away before falling into step behind the bigger Nord male. He was quiet as he led me back, eyes on the distant horizon, watching for the four mountains that surrounded and protected our Gathering Place. It was galling for me, a strong fighter, who knew every inch of this island like my own home, to be led like an errant pack-guar.

True, I wasn't in fighting condition by a long league, and I didn't even have a weapon, but I still had pride. Not a lot of pride, seeing as I was wearing nothing but a cloak several sizes too big and strips of Bristleback leather for shoes, but the thought was still there. And so was the knowledge that I had no choice, and so I pressed my lips together and followed Adian with as much dignity as I could muster. But then we were walking up to the arched boulders that formed the entrance to the Gathering Place, and I was forced to stop and stare.

The valley had been fairly large, with an exit river cutting through it on its way to the sea, the ground level, treeless, as most places this far north were. And, when I had last seen in several days ago, empty of all but the low flat stone. Now, though, werewolves in their 'normal' forms clustered around and swarmed over many skeletons of buildings, the basic framework and even some walls already built. Often heated debates broke out, half the time settled by fists, half the time by a shout from someone not involved in the argument.

Closest to the crude arch of boulders that served us as an entrance was a building with the look of a headquarters, two stories tall and already half completed. Other buildings with a similar look stretched in two vague parallel lines until they reached the boulder, where a square had formed around it…at least, I could only assume it was a square. If I squinted, it looked more like an oval…but that was beside the point.

Closest to the base of the largest mountain was a long building, two stories high again, and it was this building that had the most werewolves around it, and thus looked to be the closest to completion. One side of the valley was still 'open,' though, the section closest to the river's exit. That is to say, there weren't any buildings going up…but there was activity.

A group of a ten or so werewolves sawed huge pine trunks into planks, stacking them into neat piles for the builders to easily access. Of those, two or three werewolves were fashioning things from large sections of logs, their finished products off to one side; tables and stools and chairs and even one bed with scrollwork on the headboard and the feet.

"Hircine bless…" I murmured in amazement; it was one thing to be told that we were creating a town, another to actually see it half-completed.

Adian smiled, and pointed to a small arching doorway in the side of a mountain, "Look there." I did as he requested, and was rewarded by the sight of a mage walking out, levitated boulders twice his size floating after him. He directed them towards one of the small gaps between the four mountains, piling them up at the base. "For walls, after we complete the main town," Adian explained, then nodded up at the mountain again, "And look there, see the ledge partway up the mountain? That's where the guard will stand…I hope that they'll make the ledge go all the way round the mountain top, so that he or she can look in all directions. The other three mountains will have lookout posts just like it, and the main gates will be guarded day and night by one of our people…"

The enthusiasm in Adian's voice lifted my spirits as we walked through the archway; he really did love this place. This town or city or whatever was his dream, and he was as proud as a captain with his first ship. He pointed out the outdoor kitchens to me, though I would have guessed their location on my own, by virtue of smell and the three werewolves in aprons happily arguing over how best to cook a Horker. Life sounded like it was falling into a pattern here…cooperation, if cheerfully argumentative cooperation, penetrated all aspects of life. It reminded me of the few times I had been in Thrisk, the mead hall…Which was a good thing; it made me feel right at home.

Adian led me over to one of the half-completed buildings set back from the main street — at least, so I assumed the two parallel rows of buildings indicated the main street — and called up to one of the werewolves in the scaffolding, "Where has Eponis White-Heart gotten to?"

In response she pointed to the sheltered base of another mountain, the same one that had the small cave. Now, though, there was a fully constructed building on that site, built flush against the mountain. "Infirmary," Adian explained when he saw that I was staring, "We thought it best to finish it first. It's not quite done on the interior yet, but the walls are up and it's sectioned into rooms, so it won't be long."

"Adian Thunder!" a tall Nord female with fiery hair stalked over, scowling, "The werewolves working on the bunkhouse want to recruit those working on the tavern so that the bunkhouse gets done faster…"

Adian groaned, rolling his eyes. Turning to me, he nodded to the infirmary, "Go talk to Eponis; I think you know about what. I've got this to deal with…"

I nodded, and added to the Nord female, "Nice to see you again, Firebrand."

Her face lit up, "It's Arndis in this form," she corrected, but smiled, "Still, how did you…?"

I grinned, "Just a hunch." With that, I turned and walked towards the infirmary, cloak still tight around my shoulders, feet still wrapped in Tusked Bristleback leather. Behind me, I could just hear Arndis Firebrand and Adian Thunder whisper together before moving off to take care of whatever it was that required Adian's attention. I walked up to the infirmary, staring at the pine door so new it seemed to still bleed sap for a long moment before shoving the door open.