Morndas, 17th of Last Seed, 4E201
She was trapped in a city of death. Helgen, they'd called it. Everywhere, she saw bodies; burned and blackened bodies, crushed and bleeding bodies, broken and gouged bodies. The air smelled like smoke and burnt meat.
Their group dwindled. Minutes after they'd exited the burning building, they were ambushed by enemy soldiers. One of Ulfric's men stepped in front of a mace aimed for his head. A red soldier managed to seize the girl by the arm, but Ralof tackled him, and wrestled the soldier's sword away. When he sliced the man's neck open, the blood spurted across her shoes.
A short run later, the remainder of their companions were caught in a torrent of flame. Ulfric only just managed to shove the girl and Ralof out of the way, the three of them sprawling to the dirt as the others screamed. The girl's eyes stung from the heat.
Singed, but alive, Ralof retook her hand as Ulfric commanded them to keep going. They ran toward one of the few fortifications left intact, one Ulfric believed would give them passage outside the city wall. But as they approached the door to the fort, a red soldier stepped in front of them.
They halted. Ralof pushed her behind him. She peeked around his arm and recognized their interceptor as Hadvar, the name-reader. His breathing was labored as he faced them, a nasty cut across his cheek and scorch marks on his armor. He held up a sword and leveled it at Ulfric.
"I'm not about to let you get away."
Ulfric was unperturbed. "You know you don't stand a chance against me. Step aside and you don't have to die today."
Hadvar scowled. His eyes flicked to Ralof and darkened.
"Ralof, you damned traitor. This is the man you'd throw away your life for?"
Ralof lifted his chin. "I would gladly give my life to set the true High King on the throne. If anyone here is a traitor, it's you."
Hadvar scoffed. The shake of his head had an air of pity. "You're not the person you used to be."
"I'm not the one beheading children."
Hadvar stopped short. For the first time, he seemed to notice her, hiding partially behind Ralof's blue armor. An indecipherable emotion rolled over his face.
"That wasn't my call," he said evenly.
"Right, it was your leader's."
"Enough of this," Ulfric cut in, raising his hand to silence Ralof. "The dragon will be circling this way any second. Stand aside or I'll make you."
Hadvar's feet planted themselves in the dirt. His eyes darted between their three faces as he considered his options. He came to a conclusion and squared his jaw.
"Where are you taking the girl?"
This surprised them. Ralof glanced down at her and she blinked up at him. He looked at Hadvar. "Away from here. What's it to you?"
To their even greater surprise, Hadvar met her eyes and held out a hand. "You won't be safe if you leave with these rebels. I can make sure you get home. To make up … for what almost happened."
Ralof bristled and held out an arm as if to prevent her moving forward. "You think we're just going to give her to you after you tried to kill her? How do we know that Imperial bitch won't send her right back to the executioner?"
"You're going to be hunted from here to Eastmarch!" Hadvar snapped. He focused his next words specifically on Ulfric. "She's not safe with you, and she doesn't deserve to get caught up in your mess. I'm willing to let you pass if you let me save this child. "
Her head swirled. Was he right? If these two were rebels in enemy territory, then being found in their company could put her right back under an axe. And Hadvar's offer seemed genuine, as if he actually felt remorse for her near-death. He hadn't been the one to drag her to the block, after all.
"It's up to you, girl."
Her head flew up at Ulfric's address. He nodded seriously. "Choose fast."
Choose fast. Yes, because there was a dragon, and possibly other soldiers, and they would kill these men and her with them. She looked at Hadvar, extending his hand, with an almost pleading expression on his face. Every second she hesitated was a second closer to death for all of them.
It took only a moment to realize it was a matter of trust. Hadvar, she might trust, but he had no control over his leaders despite his promise to atone. Ulfric, clearly the head of the opposition, had helped her without question. The choice was easy.
She shook her head at Hadvar and stepped back, taking hold of Ralof's arm. Disappointed, Hadvar curled his fingers into a fist before letting his hand drop. He and Ulfric faced each other again, both shifting in preparation for the now-unavoidable fight—though, strangely, Ulfric had not scavenged a weapon like Ralof. Was he that confident in his strength?
As Ralof ushered her back, she saw motion out of the corner of her eye. There was a man rising atop an inner portion of the city wall, the color of his armor difficult to make out in the smoggy air. The bow in his hands rose, the string pulling back with an arrow nocked, and with a jolt, she realized he was aiming at Ralof.
She didn't think. She darted into the archer's line of sight, ears catching Ralof's startled exclamation before something struck her shoulder. A scream flew up her throat; she collapsed into Ralof and saw blackness. The men were shouting. Above the noise and the pain, she heard an even louder voice, an impossibly deep timbre that reverberated off her heart.
"YOL TOOR SHUL!"
The world behind her eyelids got brighter, the men's voices blurring into a surge of wind and heat. When did she close her eyes? Was she on the ground? No, something was jostling her wounded shoulder, making her scream again; the pain was fire, the air was fire, her blood was fire and it was rushing through her like a mad thing until—
She woke up somewhere quiet. Her shoulder was throbbing in time to a steady motion beneath her, while her uninjured side was pressed against something solid and awkwardly shaped. Low voices, accompanied by a faint trickle of water, murmured to each other in what sounded like an enclosed space. The air was cool and stagnant.
"… don't know where that dragon came from, but without it we'd be a foot shorter and a lot less talkative."
"Aye, Jarl, no doubt about that. It's almost enough to believe it was fate."
"Perhaps. Both sides lost many men today."
She tried to move, to alleviate the uncomfortable bend of her neck and curl the numb fingers of her left hand, and was rewarded with a fresh lance of pain. A stilted sound escaped her, tears welling up behind her eyelids. The motion and the voices ceased.
"Set her down."
The girl blinked open her eyes to a dimly lit cavern, registering uneven rock walls peppered with soft, blue-green lights. Some sort of luminescent plant, she assumed. The awkward shape against her was lowering her to the ground, seating her on a gritty patch of not-quite-damp earth. Ralof crouched at her side. Ulfric dropped to one knee at her feet. Her head felt light and her throat parched; she tried to swallow the dryness away.
"All right there?" Ralof asked. She recalled he'd asked the same thing the first time she'd woken up in pain.
She gave her attention to her left shoulder, out of which an arrow shaft should have protruded, but didn't. Someone had wrapped a tattered piece of cloth under her arm and around the wound. It was uncomfortably tight and looked as if she'd bled through it. She frowned.
"Sorry about the patch job," Ralof said, scratching the side of his beard with a finger. "We took a look through the Imperials' stores, but they must have cleaned out the healing potions. Arrow came out easy enough, though."
She nodded and gingerly tried to massage some feeling back into her hand, glancing again at their surroundings. Hadvar was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered if he was dead. An inexplicable lump formed in her throat.
"Not much of a conversationalist, are you?"
The girl looked at Ulfric. He rested his arm across his knee and raised a brow when she simply stared at him. She dropped her eyes and pursed her lips.
Ralof gave a bleak chuckle. "That's what pissed off the Imperials. Thought she was being a brat."
She sensed Ulfric's ire rather than saw it; the hair on the back of her neck rose.
"You're not serious."
Ralof didn't say anything, and of course, neither did she. After a simmering moment of silence, Ulfric got to his feet and started walking away.
"Let's keep going. This cave's got to end sooner or later."
With Ralof's assistance, she got to her feet, a little unsteady but able to walk. She felt unnaturally fragile and wondered when she'd last eaten, and when she would be able to eat again. And what about sleep? Fainting hadn't exactly been restful.
Ralof explained to her how the dragon had made a pass from above right when she'd been shot, and how he'd thrown them both out of the path of its fire. Ulfric had incapacitated Hadvar and turned to help him pull the girl into the relative safety of the fort before the dragon could double back.
"I didn't expect you to take an arrow for me," Ralof added. His tone was impressed? She tilted her head and looked at him. Sure enough, he had a smile on his face as he took her good hand. "I was right to have you watch my back. Thank you."
She hesitated before nodding. Taking the arrow hadn't been a conscious choice on her part. Thinking back, her immediate intent had been to knock it away or retroactively force the archer to alter his aim. Ridiculous, but it had seemed possible in the heat of the moment.
Speaking of heat, she thought, what was that voice when the dragon tried to set us on fire? Her hand squeezed Ralof's a little tighter as she recalled the way the strange words had resonated in her chest. It had seemed to come from above. Could dragons speak?
Ralof had to help her over the slippery rocks of a shallow stream, and she pushed aside the unnerving voice for later, concentrating on not twisting an ankle. Once they'd gotten over the water and caught up to Ulfric, she spared another thought for their location. She tugged on Ralof's hand to get his attention. Receiving it, she cast her eyes deliberately at the damp, stony walls, then met his gaze and pulled her eyebrows together.
He glanced around also. "This is what's below the fort we ran into. You missed the first couple of floors while we were looking for healing potions. We think there'll be an exit somewhere ahead that spits us out on the north side, and then we can head to Riverwood."
When she tilted her head, he added, "It's a little village where I grew up, and where my sister lives. She runs the lumber mill, and I know she'd be willing to help us out."
"Stop," came a command.
They stopped. Ulfric motioned them back against the cave wall, his eyes fixed on a large misshapen hole in the ceiling a few yards ahead. Without taking his eyes off the hole, he murmured back to them, "Look at the wall, by the floor. Egg sac."
Ralof made a soft noise. "Frostbite spider."
Spider? She took a step closer to Ralof.
Ulfric began to walk forward, signaling them to stay put. "Watch her. I'll take care of it."
They waited as he strode closer and closer to the hole in the ceiling, the girl holding her breath. A flicker of movement at the edge of the hole caught her eye, and the next thing she knew a giant, spindly-legged shape had emerged. She couldn't help a shriek; Ralof covered her mouth and they watched the spider plummet on a string of web.
"FUS!"
The spider smacked into the ceiling, the force of the collision ripping legs from its abdomen. Ulfric took a hasty step back as the mangled corpse hit the ground. One leg twitched and the spider fell still.
Ralof relaxed and dropped his hand from the girl's mouth, but she was frozen. Ulfric hadn't done anything more than speak, but she'd felt the power of that strange word ripple over her like a burst of warm air. Warm, and yet she had goosebumps. Though not as powerful as the voice in the fire, it unnerved her; made her heart quiver with the same understanding. When Ulfric faced them again, she flinched.
Ulfric paused. Ralof drew away from her and glanced between the two of them. They stood in awkward silence until Ralof cleared his throat.
"I guess you didn't see him Shout at Hadvar."
A shock ran through her. He'd done that to Hadvar? She recalled the way he'd prepared to face the soldier without drawing a weapon, and now it made sense. He had this power to … she wasn't sure. Create force with his voice? But the Imperials had clearly felt the need to gag him even while his hands were bound and his soldiers defeated, so he must have been dangerous. And hadn't General Tullius said something about using his voice to murder the king?
Ulfric studied her for a moment before shaking his head. He looked down the cave. "You don't have anything to fear from me, girl."
A hand fell on her arm, and she jumped. Ralof immediately retracted the touch, expression wounded. Shame washed through her. What was she doing, acting jumpy around these two? They'd done nothing but help her in the short time they'd known each other. Even if Ulfric could—yell people to death?
She gently took Ralof's wrist and hunched her shoulders, contrite. The look on his face changed to one of bemusement.
"It's not scary once you've seen it a few times," he offered. She nodded and glanced at Ulfric. He dipped his head in acknowledgement before turning away. He gestured for them to come, and they obliged, Ralof looping her hand through his arm.
"I think I see a bend of light down that way," Ulfric said. "We're almost out of here."
Author's Note:
A shorter chapter today.