Chapter 8
There was a secret exit. Dree would have liked to discover it on purpose, but of all the places she looked with her new sight, down did not occur to her. What happened, in the event, was that she nearly tripped over the round grate. Further, she did it at the exact moment that a guard was on his way up out of it.
Dree righted herself quickly. Man and mer stared at each other. The guard had a sword in his hand, and his helmet hid his face.
"Oh, Sithis," Dree said, and then realized what she'd said. She drew her dagger as the guard tried to hack at her and scramble out of the hole at the same time. She darted backward as he shouted,
"Assassins!"
"Of course they're assassins, you idiot," echoed a voice from the bottom of the ladder. "Would a thief be running around swinging an axe? Kill whoever it is, so we can get out of here."
Remember what Gogron said. He's got more experience than you. Most people did so far, Dree thought. Maybe he's slower. She backed cautiously as the man stalked forward, turning his head to and fro to try and make her out in the dark. And she was still nearly invisible, she was sure of it.
One way to find out. Dree darted in and jabbed for the side seam in the man's chainmail cuirass. The knife slid in far too easily, and the sensation was revolting. By the time the man knew enough to grunt in pain she had stabbed him three times more, though in her frantic haste she missed the seam once. She twitched away as he tried to bring the sword around.
Dree tried not to feel sick as the man took a hesitant step toward her.
"Go back," he hissed toward the hole. Turning his head overbalanced him, and he staggered. He's bleeding. I can smell it. I can see it, even in the dark. She'd cut something important. The chainmail was dark all around the seam, and something inside was pulsing. Better be quick, or they'll get away. He's a lot taller than I am. Maybe Marie's trick will work...
Dree lunged forward and down, jabbed the knife into the man's inner thigh, and twisted as she jerked it downward. It sliced through the leather and hung up on the chainmail. She heard the sword whistle over her head as she ducked, but blood was spurting over her hand. Dree rolled quickly away and to her feet, looking around wildly.
The guard was on his knees. Blood soaked his greaves, still gushing. He reached for the knife, but his grasping fingers missed it, and he fell over onto his side. He jerked a couple of times as she watched in horrified fascination. The necromancer had been quick, do or die. It had been nothing like this.
The knife. The tunnel. Dree ran up and nudged the man with her foot, but her dagger was so covered in gore that she could hardly see it. The smell of blood did strange things to her vision, making it blur into red around the edges, making the roar of blood in the dying man's veins loud in her ears. She snatched up the shortsword from the guard's nerveless hand instead.
She heard the last rattle of his heart as she reached the edge of the grating. There was blood on her robe, where the first spray had hit her. Not now. Not now. She crouched at the edge of the hole, out of view of any potential archers below, but the guard's last warning had been heard. No one was there. Dree clambered down the ladder and set off up the tunnel. It was almost featureless, smooth walls of earth all around her. There were no torches, but the smell of smoke said there had been recently. Ha, she thought, and suppressed a hysterical laugh. You can't blind me. Everything around her seemed blue or red now, a million different shades of just two colors. Up ahead, around a corner, she could see the man and his guard. The outlines were no longer nebulous. She could see the Altmer's wrinkled face, and every ring on the guard's mail. This guard was bigger than the other, an unhelmed Argonian. He held a claymore in his hands. The sword was almost as long as Dree was tall. She saw his tail twitch as she grew closer.
"One approaches," she heard him say.
Dree blinkedwondering how he'd heard her, and then remembered the famed Argonian sense of smell. The blood.
"Is it Garen?"
"No," said the Argonian. "I fear Garen is dead."
The old Altmer was grimly silent. Dree tried to find this reassuring, but her knife was back in the dead man, and she barely knew what to do with a shortsword. She adjusted her grip nervously as she came forward. She dropped the chameleon spell. There was no point, and she might need all her concentration, especially with the red aura distracting her. She could hear both hearts beating, faster than normal. They can't go back. They know Gogron's in the house. The only way they can get out is through me.
Oh, good. And I'd like it if that Argonian's pulse sounded a little more anxious, thank you very much.
"Argonian," she said. Her voice sounded wrong in her own ears. When did I start hissing?
"What?" said the guard.
"I'm only here for him. If you want to go, I'll let you pass."
"You are in no position to bargain, small one," the guard said. "We will pass you one way or another. You know it, or you would make no such offer."
"I'd rather not kill you," Dree rasped. "I didn't want to kill the other one." This, at least, had the ring of truth. "This is nothing to do with you. But Bendorith has to die."
"This one will listen no further," said the Argonian, and he threw himself around the corner.
He was a little slower than Garen. Marie's trick still worked.
A few seconds later, Dree stepped over the body, trying to ignore the Argonian's death throes. She'd held onto the short sword, at least, though the handle was slick and sticky against her palm. Maybe it's better, sneaking up on them, she thought, not looking at him. I'll bet it's less messy. Her sandals squelched in the blood on the floor as she rounded the corner and came face to face with her prey.
"I'm unarmed," said Lord Bendorith. He seemed more angry than afraid. "I knew I should have brought that dagger. This is Adenlor's doing, isn't it? That filthy cur of a son of his - "
"Probably," Dree said.
"Of course. You wouldn't know. You're just an underling, yes? I didn't even merit a real assassin, they sent a filthy little - "
Dree stepped forward and jabbed the shortsword up under his ribs. He gasped a couple of times, but his heart had stopped the moment the blade struck it. Dree moved out of the way as he crumpled. She reached down to get the sword back. It stuck against the bones, but by bracing her foot she managed it. Her shoe left more gore on his velvet shirt than the wound itself. At least a heart stabbing was clean.
I did it, she thought. I killed someone who wasn't attacking me. He didn't even have a weapon. She had the feeling she'd missed something, that this should have been harder than killing the guards, but it wasn't. They were men doing their job. Like I'm doing. Bendorith was just a nasty old man who had made the wrong sort of enemies.
Lord Bendorith had been standing in front of a door. Dree opened it, and crept into the darkness of the house. Her ears were ringing, but she could still hear metal clashing off in the distance. She set off down the hallway, leaving bloody footprints as she went.
---
There were four guards left. Two Nords were circling Gogron in the main dining hall, stumbling over broken crockery as they tried to hit him without being hit. One Bosmer crouched on top of a high shelf, looking for an opening as he held an arrow nocked to his bow. The string sang, if you listened closely enough.
Dree saw these three from her position at the head of the basement stairs. Her vision had grown so narrow, however, that she didn't see the Human with the dagger until he stabbed her in the ribs.
The guard had stabbed people in the liver before. He knew enough to hold onto the knife, in case you got a berserker and you needed it later. If you didn't get a berserker, he knew what to expect: the initial cry of pain, the stumbling withdrawal, the fumbling as the body went into shock. It was his misfortune that he did not realize his quarry was a vampire. Shock is a function of the living.
Dree did scream. And then, crazed by pain and the stink of blood and death, she turned on him faster than eyes could follow. He lost his grip on the dagger as she shoved him against the wall, crushing him between that hard surface and her unyielding body. Then she wrapped her arm around his head, jerked his face down to her level, and sank her teeth into his throat.
Most vampires learn the skill of piercing the jugular, where two small punctures will not cause a sudden gush of blood. Dree knew nothing about this, and in that instant she was entirely a slave to her instincts. She bit directly into the great artery. Blood shot down her throat so fast it would have drowned a mortal.
For a few seconds she was blinded by the red haze. She drank, forgetting anything else. Dree hardly noticed as the man's struggles weakened, though she had to tighten her other arm around his body to hold him up. It was not until his heart actually stopped that she realized what she had done.
Suddenly, the roaring in her ears was gone. The haze cleared, and she was standing in a dead man's house with a dead man in her arms.
Dree let go abruptly. She watched the body fall to the carpet, and she never forgot the boneless thump it made. The man's head lolled. She saw the marks she had left. They seemed bigger than she'd expected, but only a very little blood ran out. Of course. I drank it all, she thought.
"Oh, gods," she said. But the gods aren't listening. You know what the Divines think about vampires? You know what they think about murderers? You know what they think about YOU?
Her wound had healed. The pain was gone. And she had committed a crime far, far worse than the killing of Lord Bendorith. I didn't enjoy it when I killed the old man.
The room seemed suddenly quiet. Dree looked around, searching for anything else to look at but the corpse at her feet. Colors had come back, not that it mattered much. The room's original decorative sensibility had included lots of gray stone, but was presently ornamented in arterial red, shading to burgundy. The long dining table lay on its side. Both the Nords were dead, one headless and one chopped nearly in half. The bookshelf was in splinters. The Bosmer who had been atop it was not in much better condition.
Gogron gro-Bolmog stood in the middle of the room, swaying. He held his axe in both hands. His armor was dented in the chest and arms, befouled and bespattered like everything else in the room. Arrows were stuck in the upper joints of his armor. His helmet was off. Dree could see his matted hair, and the light in his gold eyes.
There is a light, she realized as he turned his mad stare on her. His eyes are actually glowing.
"Gogron?" she said. She had to swallow down a clotty lump in her throat, and it was a good thing her gorge couldn't rise any more. Gogron looked at her. Bloody drool ran from one corner of his mouth, and whatever was looking out from behind his eyes showed no recognition. He raised the axe as he started toward her. He didn't seem very slowed by the arrows.
I might as well go on living, Dree thought. Or whatever this is I'm doing. I've taken too many lives to give mine up now.
She turned and sprinted for the door. There were plenty of tall trees in the woods outside, and Dree on her worst day could still outrun an Orc in heavy armor.
Even so, it was a close thing.
---
Dree woke up to the dawn's early light. She was sitting in the crotch of a tree. Not being prone to any disorientation, she looked down to see if Gogron was still there. He was. Currently, the Orc lay sprawled at the base of the tree, one hand still firmly gripping the axe. The trunk next to him was heavily splintered where he'd been trying to chop it down.
"Good thing I chose a big tree," she said. Gogron stirred, then grunted as protruding arrows brushed against the ground.
"Gogron?" Dree said.
"Aargh," he said, and sat up. "Dree? That you?"
"Up here," she said. "Are you you?"
"Think so," Gogron said. He looked down at himself. "Hm."
Dree climbed carefully down. Flakes of dried blood floated off her robe. "Are those stuck in just your armor?"
"Mostly," Gogron said. "Are you all right?"
"Mostly," Dree said. "I killed Bendorith. He was unarmed. Do you still have your flask? My mouth tastes like... Ugh."
"Yeah," Gogron said. He fumbled for the container one-handed. His other hand did not seem to want to let go of the axe.
"Thanks." Dree rinsed her mouth and spat. The astringence washed away the taste of blood. "I left my knife in someone again."
"Not so good," Gogron said. He took a drink himself before he tucked the flask away. "But it looks like I lost my bloody helmet again, so I guess we're even on that one. There's a well in the back courtyard. Let's go find our gear and get cleaned up."
"Er," Dree said, remembering something else she had done in the course of last night.
"Er what?" Gogron said. He heaved himself upright, shaking his head.
"We might want to do that... Quickly..."
"Why?" Gogron said, heading toward the house. Dree jogged to catch up. More blood was flaking off her robe. It didn't seem to be leaving a stain behind. This really is a magic robe.
"Because some people got away last night. I know we're a long way from town, but I don't know how long it will take them to get help and get back here."
Gogron stopped. Dree, perforce, stopped also.
"Who got away?" he said.
"The servants," Dree said.
"And how did that happen?" Gogron said.
Dree almost took a deep breath, before she remembered how pointless that would be. "I woke them up," Dree said. "They went out the back while you were killing the guards."
Gogron started toward the house again. Dree walked quickly next to him, trying to look at his face without seeming to do so.
"Are you sorry?" he said.
"No," Dree said.
Gogron exhaled hard, in the manner of a person too tired to laugh. "Me neither. We mostly don't get paid to kill servants, anyhow. Be different if you'd let the target get away."
"No," Dree said. "He didn't get away."
"That where you left your knife?" Gogron said. There were a few bodies lying in the grass in front of the house. These had suffered less than the ones Dree remembered seeing last night. The archer probably got his attention before he had time to do more than give them a few cursory whacks.
"No," Dree said. "I left the knife in one of the guards."
"And there he is," Gogron said, as they went around the corner of the house. The body was only a few yards from the well. At the moment it was hard to see, on account of all the flies.
"How do you know it's that one?" Dree said.
"Cause he's in one piece still," Gogron said. "Well, go on. Get your knife. Like you said, don't know how much time we have."
Getting the knife back proved nearly as unpleasant as putting it there to start with. Dree held the noisome object with two fingers as she went back to the well. Gogron was down to his trousers and was quickly splashing water on himself, his axe, and his armor. Red notches on his shoulders showed where three arrows had made contact. New and old bruises made an interesting patchwork on his green skin. Dree cleaned the knife the best she could with a bunch of grass. She skinned out of her robe to clean it, too, but the blood had dried up and blown away like dust. (She did this quickly, because the horizon was already shading from gray to gold.) And... She had been stabbed in the back last night...
Dree stared at the fabric stretched between her hands. "Gogron?"
"Yeah?" He poured a bucketful of water over his head, soaking his black hair, and shook it vigorously. Droplets of water flew everywhere.
"Where did you get this robe?"
"Bwrrrf," Gogron said. He flicked water out of one ear with a finger. "Why?"
"There's no hole in it," Dree said. "There should be a hole."
Gogron poured some water into his helmet and sloshed it back and forth. Dree noted that he must have picked it up again, but her mind was on the robe.
"There's a hole in my shirt," she said. "And a stain. Not on this."
"Near miss?" Gogron said.
"No," Dree said. "It wasn't. Gogron, the robe."
"Bought it at a shop," Gogron said. "In Cheydinhal. They get one new thing in every so often."
"Any idea where they got it?" Dree said. She put it back on slowly.
"Hun uh," Gogron said. He began to put the armor back on. "Probably someone found it in a ruin and had to sell it to keep eating. Money's real up and down in the adventuring business."
"Unlike this business?" Dree said.
"That's right," Gogron said. He settled the pointed helmet atop his head and flicked the visor up. "There's only so many ruins. There's always gonna be someone who needs killing. Let's check through before we go."
"Do we have time for that?" Dree said.
"Always," Gogron said. "And they're not going to get here from town any too quickly. Especially not if they think there might be somebody still here. City guards aren't that eager to get themselves killed, and Lord Whatsisname didn't have many friends."
Dree followed him down the secret exit – he barely fit through the hole – and up through the house. It was now literally dead quiet, except for the buzzing of the flies. A few ravens had come into the upstairs, and the occasional harsh cry seemed stifled on the thick air. At least the blood's not fresh, Dree thought. In any case I shouldn't be thirsty for days now, after what I've done.
"What'd you use here?" Gogron said as they passed Bendorith's body. He bent to retrieve the dead man's purse, then went on into the basement. The dead Altmer looked more peeved than anything else.
"Short sword," Dree said.
"From the guard," Gogron said.
"Yes."
"Good thinking."
"Thanks."
"So where is it now?"
"In the dining room," Dree said. "I think I lost it when this seven foot Orc came after me with an axe."
"Six foot eight," Gogron said. "You must jump pretty high, too. The lowest limb on that tree was what, twelve feet off the ground?"
"I was motivated," Dree said. Gogron made the not-quite-laugh sound again.
"Why don't you go upstairs and see if there's anything worth taking with us?"
"All right," Dree said, and went.
A few minutes later she found him in the dining room. "I found a couple of rubies and some jewelry," she said. "Not very much else, they must have taken it to the City with them - "
She broke off. Gogron was squatting next to the only intact corpse in the room. He held up a dagger that was bloodied to the hilt.
"This was his," he said. "And it's not his blood."
"No," Dree said. "It's mine."
"Must've gone in pretty far," Gogron said neutrally.
"All the way," Dree said. She stood beside him, looking miserably down at the corpse. "It healed when I... When I drank him."
"Hm." Gogron straightened up, tossing the dagger aside. "See, that's why I told you not to let them sneak up on you. You're lucky his aim was off. If he'd hit your heart, it wouldn't matter that you're a vampire. You'd be dust."
"You were right," Dree said. There was no point in trying to explain how she'd felt at the time. It didn't really matter. It usually doesn't.
"For all that, you did good, Dree," he said. "Most of us don't have to worry about a partner and a target. You're alive. He's dead. And nobody knows who we are. That's all that matters."
"Sure," Dree said. A gauntleted finger edged under her chin, gently tilting her head up. Gogron looked down at her through the visor of the ridiculous helmet. His eyes were ordinary now, reflecting light as it fell into them.
"It's all that matters," he repeated. "And I owe you. If you hadn't been here, he could've gotten away, and I'd be in plenty of trouble then."
"You'd have chased him down," Dree said.
Gogron took his hand away as he shrugged. "Maybe. Anyhow, you've earned your fee on this one. Even LaChance will have to call you worthy now."
"Can we go home now?" Dree said. Her voice had come back. She was a little hoarse, but then, so was Gogron.
"Yeah," Gogron said. "Let's go home."
