Chapter 7
The next few days passed relatively uneventfully in resting, training, and talking with Dree's new housemates. Teinaava did turn up with a cyrodilic alphabet, and Dree spent some time trying to decipher that also. She couldn't see how it was going to help, but Gogron seemed to think it was important.
She also heard him having a chat with Antoinetta Marie. He didn't raise his voice. He never seemed to, which was unusual in an Orc. (Dree supposed it might be necessary in an assassin.) The woman continued to be courteous and cheerful, but she barely spoke to Dree from that point on. Dree trained, was polite to everyone to the extent of her limited knowledge of what "polite" meant, and kept her head down.
This went on until Middas. That day Dree got up to find Gogron already in his gear and ready to go.
"Rise and shine," he said. "Got a contract."
Dree had her own "breakfast" in a hurry and scrambled into her equipment as Gogron ate. Teinaava and Marie were getting dressed as well. (M'raaj-Dar still slept, making a soft buzzing noise Dree had finally decided was snoring.) Everyone seemed to dress and undress without paying attention to the sex or race of whomever else was in the room, so Dree didn't, either. It was luxury enough to be changing indoors, into the nicest things she'd ever owned.
She thought Gogron wasn't paying attention, either. Then on the way out of the house he said, "Been beaten a few times?"
Dree looked sideways at him from under her hood as they walked toward the front gate of Cheydinhal. "What?"
"You've got some scars on your back," Gogron said.
"Some of them are from Antoinetta," Dree said. "They're fading."
"Un huh," Gogron said. "But they leave different marks."
"I guess they do," Dree said. "I was a slave, Gogron."
"Slaves are worth money," Gogron said. "Can't mark them up too much or they lose value. Those look like family to me. None of my business, of course. Always been nosy, for an Orc."
Dree debated silently with herself.
"When my mother was on skooma," she said finally, "she had this stick with a knobby end she liked to use. If I made a noise, or like that. Sometimes she'd cut off bits of it, so it would scratch."
"My old Dad used to do something like that when he was drunk," Gogron said. "Always blunt stuff, though. Never cut me."
"But you killed him," Dree said.
"Yeah," Gogron said. "Don't recommend it, though. Killed everybody else I knew at the time, too."
"Where are we going?" Dree said, as they walked out the heavy gate of the city. She waved to the guards. They waved cheerfully back, enjoying the morning sun. The low brown building that was the stables loomed up ahead.
"An estate up in the hills Eastward," Gogron said. "Tell you more when we're out of civilized earshot."
---
"Well?" Dree said. They rode along a dirt track surrounded by trees. A few wildflowers stood along the road or among the roots, splashes of color against the dull greens and browns. Dree didn't recognize most of them, though she could spare enough time to notice them now. Her second riding experience was proving a little easier than the first one.
"Contract, right," Gogron said. "Lord Someone – I think it was Bekinrith, sounds like an Altmer – made Lord Someone Else mad enough to want him dead. Killed his son in a duel or something. But Lord – Belekrith? Sorry, bad with Elvish names, Dree – is an invalid so he can't do it himself. At least that's what he told his contact. So we're going to Benderith-or-whatever Estate and kill everyone there. The wife and most of the staff are supposed to be down in the Imperial City shopping, so it'll be just him and his bodyguards."
"Is it bad that I'm glad about that?" Dree said.
"Probably," Gogron said evenly. "But I am, too. Hate to kill noncombatants. That's for Telaendril and Marie, all that sneak-up-and-stab-them business."
"As opposed to run-up-and-whack-them with an axe?" Dree said.
Gogron shrugged his massive shoulders. His pauldrons clinked faintly. "It's a living," he said. "And I hate to wake up in the middle of a bunch of dead kids."
Dree's skin crawled. "Does that happen a lot?" she managed after a second.
"Once was too often," Gogron said quietly.
An awkward silence followed, the sound of two people realizing the conversation has reached a point beyond which it may not go. Dree couldn't see Gogron's face, since she sat behind him on the horse. His heart thudded on in front of her like the drumbeat of Oblivion. She searched desperately for something to say. "So we're going in during the day?"
"Sure," Gogron said. He sounded relieved. "Nobody around up in the mountains. The guards are in shifts, so there won't be any fewer at night. Besides, I have lousy night vision."
"You did all right inside that cave," Dree said.
"I don't remember, but I'd guess once the running and yelling started, people were pretty easy to find. This bunch is going to be a lot more organized than the necromancers were."
"How many guards?" Dree said.
"Ten in each shift. Plus Lord Whatsisname, but he's not supposed to be much of a combatant. The house is pretty big, so your job this time will be to make sure he doesn't sneak out the back. You see me coming, climb up on something high. I can't climb."
"Oh, good," Dree said dryly. "What else do I need to know?"
They rode on through the quiet wood as Gogron explained. There was not much undergrowth. The trees take up the sun and it never hits the ground, said something inside Dree that was very old, and mer enough to survive a lifetime of cities. She pushed it back and tried to concentrate on what the Orc was saying. His armor vibrated through her arms when he spoke.
"There's a bonus for not killing the guards, but it's not going to happen," Gogron concluded finally.
"No," Dree said, thinking of what had been left of the necromancers.
"One more thing," Gogron said. "Listen close. These guards are organized. They know how to work together, and they're not just going to run at you and yell. Some of them will have been trained by thieves and know how to walk quiet, and they won't hesitate to sneak right up and stab you in the back. You're going to have to get them first."
"I understand," Dree said.
"Not sure you do," Gogron said. "I like you. So do some of the others. But if you don't get somebody this time, I'm going to have a hard time explaining it to Ocheeva. I'd rather leave you here than try, because here you can walk away and I can say you're dead."
"You'd lie to Ocheeva?" Dree said.
"I have before," Gogron said. "Once or twice."
They rode on. The terrain became steeper as they went. Eventually Gogron dismounted and led the horse on foot. Dree climbed down too, because she still wasn't sure she could stay on by herself.
"We'll be there by nightfall," Gogron said. "Ocheeva wouldn't send me too far afield with a new one in tow."
"Good," Dree said. "Daylight isn't the same. I feel stronger at night."
"I guess that stands to reason," Gogron said.
"I hate being a vampire," Dree said.
"Why?" Gogron said.
Dree stared at him. The sun was just starting to set, picking out the gold highlights on his armor. "What do you mean, why?"
Gogron shrugged. "Why do you think Vicente's so picky about who ought to be one? You're stronger than before. Faster. You can see through walls. You don't need food and you can go for days without drinking. What part of that is bad?"
Dree struggled for words. "I'm dead," she said. "I've got no life of my own any more. Only what I can take from other people. From you. And..." She peered out from under her hood at the declining afternoon. "I used to love to just lie in the sun."
"Oh," Gogron said. "Yeah."
They walked on. The sun drew down toward the horizon.
---
The duty guards at Lord Bendorith's estate were bored. This is a normal state of affairs for duty guards. City guards at least have the option of wandering around looking for miscreants to apprehend. A bodyguard spends most of his time waiting for the miscreants to come to him. There are only a limited number of criminals willing to attack a heavily guarded person to begin with, so the job tends to be rather dull. And, because of the kind of people who are willing to attack a heavily guarded person, the parts that were not dull were very exciting indeed. This is why it was necessary to have ten guards in each shift – the other ten had to spend part of their time training, so that the constant standing and staring around would not make them completely soft.
At the moment, the front door guards were watching a very large person in full black-and-gold armor walk through the front gate. Race was impossible to determine under the armor, but at least it was hard to picture an Elf that big.
"Wasn't that supposed to be locked?" one guard said.
"I think he used a spell," said the other, There was a surreptitious rearrangement of hands toward weapons. One of them kicked the lever that would ring a bell inside telling the others somebody was here who didn't belong.
"Hold, there!" the first guard called, as the armored intruder came closer. He was moving slowly, but they received the impression it was because he wanted to. He walked far too easily to be very encumbered by the armor. This was not a reassuring thought. Dwarf-made mail is known to be ridiculously heavy.
He stopped.
"Here to see Lord Ben – Benek – whatever his name is," said the intruder. His voice was muffled inside the helmet, but the way it seemed to come from clear down at the soles of his feet suggested he was probably Orcish.
"Really? And who are you?" said the guard.
"Nobody," the intruder said. He reached up one arm and drew an axe. The guards had their own weapons out before he had finished.
"You'll never get in," one said. "Do you know many of us there are up here? Spending all day just waiting for somebody like you to come along? Move on, friend. Nobody's paying you enough to get killed."
"That's true," the Orc said. He adjusted his grip on the axe. A red light lay along the blade, redder than the glow of sunset. Behind the helmet's visor, two points of gold lit up to match it.
"So how much is he paying you?" said Gogron gro-Bolmog.
---
Dree crept around the back of the enormous building, feeling exposed. There were no trees right next to the house, probably in order to prevent people like her from using them as cover or easy access to the roof. She hugged what ornamental shrubbery she could find, and worked very hard at keeping herself chameleon against the dark background. It was almost the only magic she knew. People were patrolling out here, but as she slunk toward the servants' entrance she heard a distant bell. The guard she'd been keeping an eye on for several minutes immediately drew her sword and ran for the front gate.
Off in the distance, someone shouted. There was a harsh clang like metal striking metal.
Dree looked around carefully one more time. No one was nearby, either in ordinary vision or the vague blue world Vicente Valtieri had called the hunter's sight She could see shapes inside, but all the nearest ones were oblong and more or less horizontal. Servants, probably, she thought, and then something else snapped on in her mind and she realized just what that meant.
Surely he wouldn't hit a sleeping person, she told herself. Someone who wasn't even moving? Surely not. Images of dismembered necromancers kept recurring to her mind, however, and so when she went in the back door (which was, inexplicably, unlocked) she turned toward the first room on her left.
There were two beds, barely visible in the dim light from the hallway torches. Both were occupied by women. One of them couldn't be older than Dree. She tried not to dwell on this as she went and shook the older woman's shoulder.
"Wake up," Dree whispered.
The woman stirred. "Wha? Who's that?"
"Everybody here is going to die," Dree said.
"What?" the woman sat up all the way. The hallway light on her face revealed her to be Dunmer, dark skinned and red of eye. Her hair was disheveled from sleeping, but it had started tied back in a bun.
"You hear that?" Dree said.
The woman looked around. Toward the front of the house, someone screamed. The sound cut off very suddenly. Dree tried not to dwell on the memory of heads separated from bodies.
"Oh, gods," the woman said, but she did not seem to be panicking. In fact, she was looking at Dree closely for the first time, perhaps recognizing just what it meant that she was talking to a person she could see through.
"Your Lord is going to die tonight," Dree said. "You can't stop it. But we're not after you. If you collect up all the servants and leave right now, we'll let you go. Don't stop to pick things up. You can probably come back for them tomorrow. But every living thing in this house or near it tonight will be rotting by morning, you understand?"
"There are twenty guards in this house," the woman said.
"They're all dead," Dree said. "They just don't know it yet."
Her voice must have held the ring of convicton. The woman scrambled out of bed and began shaking her roommate. "Get up! We've got to go!"
Dree left the room as quietly as she'd come in, then slid out the back door. She'd already left her post, and who knew what secret exit the house might have? Who knew how long it might take the guards to realize all twenty of them were fighting a losing battle against one single Orc?
Except, of course, for the ones who realized it really quickly.
