They realized Tasha was standing down below their camp staring at the vertical side of the hillock, looked at each other, shrugged and said their idunnos, walked down the easiest path to their right. She didn't turn or move as they approached, looking at the oddly chopped hillside. Just another bump in Skyrim's steppes, yet this side rose at a near right angle from the grasses rolling out and stretching in all directions, dotted with small rocks and boulders. There also was an exposed rock face behind the grasses and roots growing up and around it, down from above it, medium gray shale it appeared.

"Don't ... move," Tasha intoned carefully.

"What," Azuyia asked, stopping casually along with Denthryd and Wystan.

Tasha slowly held up a very long arrow with earth clumps on its head in her left hand. Her right hand was across her body on the handle of the katana at her left hip.

"Wha?!" Wystan exclaimed.

Azuyia turned and put her hands around her eyes, scanned the countryside around them. Denthryd had his arms folded and stood looking at the hillside.

"It hit near me when I had been down here a few minutes," Tasha continued, "landed almost on top of my foot."

"Think it's this," Denthryd motioned, walking towards the piece of exposed rock, "I mean ... "

"Don't!" Tasha dropped her left arm and lunged at him, jerking at his left arm.

"Hey, easy!"

"Where," Wystan asked, shifting and gazing around like Azuyia was, "could someone be hiding?"

They had been on open steppe for the third day in a row. There had not been any structures after leaving the hold proper, and would not be forests until they came to the foot of the mountains in farthest Whiterun. It was easy to travel on foot in the middle of Heartfire, this stretch, and other than around five stone of supplies on their backs, mostly food and water, far easier than huffing it up and down a high caravan route or even better through snow. Raynu, as always, had wisely applied torch to fannies and gotten them going before the autumn rains started. They, three of them at least if you didn't want to assume the bard's thoughts, were having a large time making camp pans of jerky stew in wild sage and salted fatback, sipping from trail tins, smoking and carrying on at the campfire. Who's babysitting whom, Tasha had grumbled to herself, always standing the middle watch, listening at the rustles through the indigo darkness through the tall grass. It was just past the Heartfire new moon.

The most momentous occasion since their departure had been their sighting of a bear making its way through the field off in the distance. Other than that, not a living soul other than an eagle crying or elk in groups usually smaller than ten, grazing, starting if they came too near. So then, blam! Vacation ended.

"You say it hit near your foot," Azuyia asked Tasha.

"Yes."

"Did it hit something, there? A stone? I can't see."

"No, right in the ground just before I stepped on it."

"But that's impossible!" Wystan started to look just a little scared, movements getting erratic.

"Stop," Azuyia turned to him, then asking Tasha as she set her gaze in the direction of the dark green strips rising out of the dying grass and goldenrod up the southwestern mountains, "so you pulled this arrow out of the ground from an angle?"

"Why would someone," Denthryd began.

"Listen! So there's no rock there next to your knee?"

"No. Not a one. The damn thing came from above us, guys."

Azuyia walked around the three of them towards the exposed stone on the flat hillside. Ignoring Tasha's rush towards her, not struggling as the bard's rough grip pulled at her around her neck and waist.

"Tasha ... Tasha, stop!" The Bosmer stood there calmly. "Listen to me! I'm not going to touch it!" She felt Tasha's arms slide away hesitantly, turned and looked at her and at the two other novices. "And there is no cover for a shot like that. We may as well see what is so important about this," she turned around and pointed, then letting her hand clap down against her side and facing the other three again, "inscription."

"Okay, ohKAY!" Wystan's voice shook. "You're telling me that ... arrows from the sky? What!"

Tasha crossed her arms. Denthryd made no motion and looked grave.

"Cool it, Wys," Azuyia snapped, "crying about it won't help. No. At least I don't think so. Oh, I don't know!" She threw her hands, frustrated. "Let me see that," she pointed to the arrow in Tasha's hand. The bard handed it to her with a blank look. Azuyia wiped at the head carefully with the yellow and magenta festival banner in a gloved hand. It was longer than the shafts she had seen out the tops of the open Watch although the wood was thinner. She raised the arrow out in front of her with hands below the head and feathers, tried to bend it until she let out a breath. "Not oak, yew, spruce ... not a grain I've ever seen before," she said, examining the head. "Can't make out if," she sniffed at it, "it has any poisons on it, so don't let the points break your skin." She extended the arrow out with one hand so the other three could get a better look at the head. It had downward barbs from just below the tip and a secondary set of barbed blades starting at the head's flat surface just below the main point, thinner, final barbs the same length as the main ones. "See if you can break that," she handed it to Denthryd, who gripped it as she had done, raising his shoulders and pushing down until his arms shook. The shaft didn't change shape a bit with this. He handed it to Tasha, and the same. Wystan waved it off. "Know what variety of tree this came from," Azuyia asked Tasha.

"I was hoping you'd know, Bos," the Breton replied seriously.

"Nope. This isn't Valenwood material, and unless Skyrim has sprouted a new genus of trees in the last generation I don't think you'll find it in any normal study. I mean c'mon," she chuckled, "I grew up in a tree. We know these things." The other three nodded. "I'd say it's a better chance of finding someone who knows about the forge pattern on the head. This is ebony metal. You're not going to have any old tinker putting these out on display."

"Something," Wystan started to say, "we're overlooking here in this, hm, discussion? How did a friggin arrow appear out of the sky at her feet?!"

"Like I say," Azuyia looked at him, "the best bet is to know about its manufacture. And if you haven't noticed we've been standing here quite a while. If the archer who shot this one wanted us dead, we'd be dead, or we're going to be dead, so relax."

"Relax. Oh, that's great," Wystan scoffed and crossed his arms.

Ignoring him, Azuyia wrapped the arrow up in the banner and held it with the head end facing down, and spoke to Tasha. "What do you see in that stone over there? I saw a little of the carving, but nothing clearly."

"That," Tasha turned her body in the direction of the hillside, "that's ancient Nordic. I had a funny feeling when I took a walk earlier. Notice how, amidst all this grassland, this one hill face so sharply drops like that? I mean, it's engineered, guys."

Oh, Denthryd sighed. That.

"The markings are first era ancient Nordic."

"First era?" Denthryd exclaimed. "This thing?"

"Yes," the Tasha replied, "I've seen fragments and rubbings.

"Is that so?" the Eastmarcher lifted an eyebrow at her. "And does Southall have an exhange agreement with Skyrim about national antiquities?"

"Not the time, Den," Azuyia said.

"They do make it on the market, Zu," Wystan offered.

"That another thing daddy made his gold on, buddy," Denthryd asked Wystan sharply.

"My father," Wystan yelled back, "deals in commodities only! Business is his business, and you gotta know things like this," he pointed at the inscription, "if you want to survive. He doesn't deal in graverobbery, but there are plenty who do." Denthryd grumbled and raised his head a little. "Shee! Dad doesn't go to church, but we're Nords as much as you ... brother."

"Guys ... " Azuyia said at her feet.

"An ... y ... wayyy," Tasha continued, "first era archaeological finds are all over Tamriel, folks. High Rock had a section devoted to its texts. This," she motioned with both arms like a stage usher for them to walk with her, "is definitely first era. Don't ask me what century, I do not know. My specialty before I completed my basic form," she laughed, "was ballads. They have specialists who know these things just as they do in Winterhold. My point," she put her hands on her hips, nodding at the stone surface, "was that there is the tip of a rune, see, there? You don't want to go fiddling with this surface. You don't know what that rune will do."

"K. Sooo ... " Wystan asked, "what now?"

Tasha turned to Azuyia. "I think our resident fletching master has the best idea. Whoever shot at me doesn't want us near this." She turned and walked back toward the direction of the upward winding path to the top of the hillock.

"I still don't get ... " Denthryd said at the backs of the two others as they followed Tasha.

"Neither do I," Azuyia said, "but we're still alive."

The four had gotten off the steppe two days ago, down a trail around a lake in between a cluster of low hills. There were five buildings around a windmill. Settling in that evening at the Goat Hustle Tavern with the relief of a deep log fireplace and chairs around a table, they drank earthenware steins with pewter lids of some thick, nearly black local brew and tried not to wolf the first pie they'd had in a week. Folks from what they learned was Moraineton didn't give them any particular notice. One friendly couple had asked who they were, listened to their bear story, shared a drink. A young woman still in dusty miller's apron played a lively round on a scratched, plain lute holding it by one arm and running her fingertips across the strings much faster than the well-worn Cyrodiilic orchestrations, and the mostly shouted rather than sung chorus a tad bawdier. People clapped and swung each other by the shoulder in to the public house at dusk.

Tasha stood across the room talking with the fellow musician later on. Denthryd had fallen fast asleep in his chair leaning up against the wall next to the fireplace, feet on another chair. Wystan and Azuyia sat in their food dreams with untouched glass gills of the inn's special aqua vita watching people, now sedately talking and laughing together. The Bosmer had had her eye on one of them even through a stomach about to pop with that delicious wild boar and goat cheese sausage, an elderly man with long, white hair pulled into a ponytail that stretched to the middle of his back. Unlike everyone else she could make out in the darkened room, the fire lower and night fallen, he had no work grit on his hands and face, perhaps a lodger like they were.

The guy did, though, stand out to her. For one, he wore sleeveless hunter's field clothes. The jerkin looked different, too, the rabbit fur not shifting and flowing like a shirt; it looked reinforced and stiff. His fur pants, too, didn't move as much when he walked, and were not tucked into his boots. Azuyia knew they didn't need local trouble at the end of a hard week's hike, and wanted a soft bed for at least eight hours, so she put her palm to her forhead and let her hair drop around her face, walked back from the bar with the gill past the man sitting at the central common table. He had his back to the path she took and was talking across the table with another man about his age, a farmer by the hat hanging from its cord around his neck. She wanted a look at his shoes. The man in hunter's fur also, curiously, had a thin scarf wrapped around his forehead that tied around the back and fell to the nape of his neck, the only one in the room wearing such, and it hadn't seemed to her the type of headwear senior Nords wore during their merry time. The Troupe show had sold scores of brightly dyed items like that one, and they almost exclusively found themselves on the heads of kids and teenagers.

The fur trousers draped to the floor so she only got a fast peek at the instep and partial sole of his one foot that was pulled back under the bench. They weren't the light chamois many hunters wore on day trips or if they pitched tent permanently on a plentiful range, either case because you'd want to move fast and as quietly as possible. The man wore bouilli boots with thick soles and dull metal reinforcement wrapping around the front of the instep and reaching almost to the top of the toes. She kept up her drunk act and bent down to put her arms around a surprised Wystan, hugging him with a noisy hey-baby and giggling.

"Zuyi," the perplexed merchant's son asked her when she kerwhumped into her seat and pulled it up close to him, leaning her head on his shoulder, and whispering in his ear.

"See that older fella on our side of the long table, down there? The one in hunting gear?"

"Yeah?"

"Not a hunter, and not local."

"So? It's an inn, Zuyia. What .. ?" He pushed at her.

"Hon-eyyyy!" She acted flip as he got up and walked in the direction of the room hallway in the far corner behind the seats, ran her hand through her hair dramatically and exaggerated her shoulders and hips as she followed him. "Don't be like thaaaat!"

Wystan had gone to their shared room with the two beds. She still chuckled inside since she and Denthryd would be sharing one of them, and Tasha had to put up with him for the night. She's a tough girl, Azuyia laughed to herself, and Wystan, I think, wants to wake up intact, shall we say?

He was laying with his hands behind his head. Azuyia pulled one of the two chairs from the side table, carried it over, and sat down with the back in front of her next to the bed.

"Zu ... I'm tired. Drop it. And what's with the weirdness," he gestured pulling one hand out from under the pillow.

She spoke in a quiet voice. "That man is wearing armor, Wys. Did you see any regimental color anywhere here or out there?"

"No, and who cares. And the guy must be eighty, for Talos! Probably a reservist who settled here."

"I don't think so."

"Zuyia," Wystan said, sitting up and sitting crosslegged on the bed, "what ... is all this about, hm? Some tough old grandpa in his leathers and do-rag telling war stories with his mates. That would be my guess."

"Well I don't suppose you watched him walk in, or walk around, did you? That grandpa moves a lot faster than any normal eighty-year old Nord man I've ever seen. Oh, he's no young onion, but his arms and legs don't look nearly as stiff."

"And?" Wystan yawned and spread back out.

"And when he was walking I noticed two things about his body."

"Not Den?"

"Would you grow up and listen," Azuyia raised her whispered tone a bit, "this is serious. We need to keep an eye on our surroundings just like ... out ... there!" She pointed out in the abstract beyond the wall. "You don't know who walks through these little hamlets, not in these times. Not in any times."

"Oh ... kayy. What's so un-copacetic about the way he walks?"

Ignoring the sarcasm, Azuyia answered him. "He has archer's scars on his left arm, and an archer's right hand. See?" She curled her fingers. "Like this. We're all archers in Valenwood. Taught to shoot as soon as we can hold a bow. My country doesn't have the kind of killing fields that Skyrim has, and we have known forever that we aren't usually going to win toe-to-toe with an Altmer main line. I grew up with bows, hell," she spaced off with her eyes elevated, then returning her gaze to Wystan, "I can make one myself. Part of primary school. Didn't learn any metal trade, so that would be where I went to an armory, but I could fletch a bow good enough to bring down a deer at three hundred paces."

Wystan's eyes widened where he lay, still. He turned on one elbow and looked at her. She was nodding at him matter-of-factly.

"Seriously?"

"Yep."

"That's some ... shooting, Zu. Why ... didn't you bring one with you on all this?"

"Didn't think we'd need it, didn't want to carry the extra weight. We've gotfood, and with those packs anything gets close enough a sax and flames would do a lot more damage. Besides," she poked back at him, grinning, "I've got two biiiig, stronnng men to look after a widdw elfy."

Wystan smiled wrily. "Don't forget Lady Razrtip out there."

"Anyway. You grow up around bows and arrows, and the people who use them, you know what you're looking at. I'd bet that guy's right hand is bent like that from drawing a bow for most of eight decades. His walk, too, looks like it. It's hard to describe, just a minute difference in the way he swings his arms. They say an archer's skeleton shows a right shoulder disproportionate to the left, vice-versa if it's from a southpaw. His right arm moves like an archer's, and by that I mean a trained, military specialist who spends all day practicing a draw, testing the draws of other bows, target shooting. That kind of archer breathes arrows the way the career line infantry swing two-stone hammers. See the size of those two Watch we stayed with?"

"Yeah I know about those types. Some in my town, all Great War vetarans, they'd go out and do unarmed sparring during the spring plough, men and women in their sixties. Made an impression on me as a boy."

The door opened to a quite sleepy-looking Denthryd, who mumbled something incoherently and threw himself face down on the other bed, back out after a couple of breaths.

"You were saying 'of archers and lummoxes,'" he smirked.

Azuyia gave him a look. "I'm going to see where Tasha's gotten herself," she said, standing up and leaving the chair, closing the door quietly behind her.

"Tash ... aaa. Put the ... knife ... downnn," Azuyia said.

The Bosmer had been sitting out in the late public room, sipping at one of the two gills she and Wystan had ordered hours ago, watching people leave. The bartender Jarn was pushing chairs against the wall, and so the inkeepers wiped plates next to a basin of water behind the bar. The man in the hunting armor was one of two still there other than she and Tasha. He sat in the same spot on the bench at the common table, talking, now more audible with the rest of the village gone home to bed.

" ... movement in the pass, recruits ... " she heard him say to the farmer.

" ... hope that never reaches Moraineton, man ... " the other was saying.

Yep, military, she had thought. Just ducky if we've walked into a skirmish zone.

Tasha appeared at the open doorway of the other room hallway diagonal from the one with the four doors where they four had lodged for the night. She had her left hand on the pommel of her sword in the stiff swagger one sees when members of only neutrally friendly units of one type or the other happen on each other in a room. Uh, oh. What's she thinking, went through Azuyia's mind. She's got the arrow with her.

Tasha walked right up to the man and stood over him. The bartender had noticed her, and the two innkeepers stood at the open end of the bar. None were armed, but they hadn't taken long to notice just a few steps across the room from a doorway. Fights start fast in roadside inns.

"Evening!" Tasha loudly introduced herself by full name, making Azuyia wince. "Ever heard of me?"

The man in hunting gear eyed her without an expression. "Should I have?" His conversation mate had started to get up and back away towards the wall. Tasha Razrtip had the scars and the ink. These two needed a wide berth.

"Lead singer for Tasha's Troupe, out of High Rock, out on tour," she continued with a brazen volume, "seeing ... the country, eh?" She took a seat where the farmer had been all night across from the man, making an obvious show of pulling her sword out from her belt and resting it on the table at her left along with the arrow wrapped in a bundle. The man did not move, and his face remained unexpressive.

"Heard you talking, standing over there," she motioned with her head towards the hallway, "bout troops along the Rift."

"What's it to you, sis?" he replied in a weathered bass, hands clasped loosely on the table. "You auxiliary or somethin," he asked gruffly.

"Nuuuu," she intoned, she said slowly, pulling at the bottom edge of the arrow's wrappings until it clinked on the table, tossing the banner past her sword, "that's why I'd like your expert opinion." The man's eyes slowly lowered to the arrow and then back to her. He did not say anything. "See ... I'm just a nosy outta-towner looking in the open doorways here," she got out before a throat cleared from the direction of the bar, "and I see a Legion bow hanging in one of them that's big enough to fire one of these," she ran her hand palm upwards up and down in the air just above the arrow. "And I kinda wonder," she began before performing a maneuver Azuyia would have been amazed to see an Altmer acrobat perform, placing her hands in a split second flat on the table and pushing the bench out from behind her legs, launching her entire body full extended into the air and over the man's head to recover on her feet behind him. She had a single-edged glass blade at his throat and the other hand gripping the front of his cuirass.

The man smiled and barely moved his eyebrows. "You kill me, here," he said to her, "and you will die getting in there."

"Where!"

"You're not stupid enough to break in there on your own, are you?"

"Who are you?!"

Azuyia rushed over. They were a long way from Solitude and this was Talos country. Whomever the man with the bow was, they did not want to murder him in front of four peasants on their way to the national Legion headquarters.

"Tasha? What are you doing?"

"What's it look like, Zu, getting answers."

The man spoke up in the same deliberate timbre. Through it the two of them thought they might hear noble birth in its inflection, courtly precision. "Guard Senior, Aethelweard, Rift Sentinels. I am here in Moraineton on orders."

At your age, the bard thought incredulously. Tasha lifted the knife away from him and took a step back, walking back around to her katana and sheathing the smaller blade behind her back, left fingertips on the sword sheath.

"Long way from there, my friend."

"The Sentinels are in and around Riften, yes, but that's just the funding and the main base on the way east to Fort Dawnguard. We have posts in every hold and along the entire Skyrim border."

This must be one very, very secure unit, Azuyia thought, for him to be letting that much information go to two strangers in front of four townfolk.

"So it was you," she persisted. "Helluva shot. Can't," she attempted fully expecting to get nothing, "figure out where you could have hidden to take any sort of a vantage point."

Aethelweard's next movement had the effect even on a master bard, and Tasha to boot, that a statue suddenly cracking a smile would have should you pass such a magical display.

"I don't think so," his slight chuckle stirring deep down to the floor. "And we three need to talk," he turned his head to Azuyia, "you, too, Bosmer. And your two novice friends."