Oh my goodness! I absolutely canNOT apologize enough for how long it's been since my last update! My life's been more than a little hectic lately, and, on top of working retail during the holiday season (YIKES!), I moved into a new house... One without internet! Ahh! I JUST got internet installed yesterday and am back on the update train!
Anyway, fervent apologies aside, I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! I'm finally beginning to delve a little into the plot I've got planned. I also want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your incredibly kind comments! You guys make fighting my writer's block just a little bit easier
As usual, thanks for reading... And, more importantly, Happy Holidays to all of you lovelies!
topside
The sound of Mayenor's scream ringing through the trees stops Vilkas's heart. That didn't sound like a signal scream, he thinks as he draws his sword. That sounded like a woman afraid for her life. Hoisting Mayenor's bag and his own onto his shoulders, he barrels into the camp, sword raised. He expects to see Mayenor thrashing against her captors or lying in a pool of her own blood; instead, she's backed up against the camp wall, fire glinting in one hand and her knife dripping red in the other. At her feet lies one of the bandits, gurgling as he tries to keep his own blood from gushing out his slit throat.
Vilkas pushes his concern for Mayenor aside for a moment, remembering the plan and scaling the steps to the wall. One by one, he dispatches of the archers, who are so focused on trying to subdue Mayenor that they never see him coming. Finally, he returns to the ground and rushes toward the group of bandits surrounding his Shield-Sister. Another bandit, this one a woman, is bleeding out on the damp grass; yet another stumbles away with his armor ablaze. As Vilkas begins the attack from behind, felling two bandits before they realize they've been set upon by a second attacker, he glimpses one of the men knocking Mayenor's dagger from her grip; before the bandit has time to act on his advantage, she pulls an arrow from her quiver and plunges it into his chest with her bare hands.
They make short work of the bandits. Only moments after he'd stormed into the camp, Vilkas stands beside his plainclothes ally, breathing heavily. A dozen bandits—men, women, Orcs, Nords—litter the ground around them.
"Are you alright?" Vilkas asks, turning on Mayenor. She, too, is panting, and her plain dress is splattered with wet, dark stains.
"Of course," she replies without looking at him. Instead, she bends to search through her victims' pockets, relieving the corpses of coin and jewelry alike. Vilkas looks away.
"What took you so long to signal?" He grunts, discarding her sword and pack.
"I wanted to make sure I had all the archers distracted before you came blundering in here like a herd of cattle," she scoffs. Once she's finished looting the bodies, she steps into Vilkas's line of sight. "Well done with the men on the walls. They were more attentive than I expected."
"You're not bad with that knife," he says, changing the subject as she kneels in the blood-stained dirt, grabbing her leather armor from her bag.
"It was the first weapon I found when I came to Skyrim," she explains, tugging her ruined dress over her head. Vilkas turns away quickly, reminding himself that he has to keep his mind on the mission. "I learned how to use it pretty quickly. Didn't have much of a choice."
"When you came to Skyrim?" He repeats, frowning. "Weren't you born here?"
"Do you really think this is the best time for a personal chat?" She deflects the question, catching his eye with a quirked eyebrow as she slings her bow, sword, quiver, and pack onto her back. "There's a few tents 'round the main campsite," she says, jerking her chin toward the other side of the camp, "but they're all empty now. It looks like there's the entrance to a mine behind those boulders over there. My guess is the rest of the pack is holed up down there with the leader."
"Any idea how many are down there?" Vilkas allows her change of subject, filing the comment away with the rest of what little he knows of her past.
"The caves in these mountains are rarely very large, luckily. The worst I've ever found is a small giant camp farther north. Based on how widespread the raids have been, though, I'd guess this is a pretty big group. Maybe twenty more in the caves?" Vilkas grimaces.
"And Aela said this would be an easy job…"
"Chin up, Vilkas," Mayenor chirps, feigning cheerfulness. "After this, you'll have a grand story to coax women into bed with."
Vilkas eyes her then, lips pursed. He wants to tell her that killing men is hardly something to brag about, and that he doesn't need grand stories to woo women into his bed, besides. But then she gives him a cheeky wink, and it's all he can do to keep from telling her that she's the only woman he wants to tangle into his sheets.
"Let's go. I want to get these caves cleared before nightfall so we don't have to sleep in the rain." Her practical words shake him from his thoughts, as usual, and he nods before following her over to the pile of boulders she had indicated earlier. Behind it, a wooden door hangs crooked on its hinges; Mayenor shoves it aside, and they step into the stale air of the mine shaft.
"The tunnel is narrow," Vilkas murmurs. "It's probably a small mine, then." Mayenor nods in silent agreement, and together, they creep forward, swords ready.
They meet a few pockets of resistance as they make their way through the mine, but never more than two or three bandits at a time. The air grows colder and more stale the deeper they go, and, though the tunnel is longer than either of them had expected, it never widens even enough for the Companions to walk side by side.
"This isn't a mine," Mayenor whispers after a while, a frown creasing her forehead.
"What do you mean?"
"Look how narrow this passage is. It's not even wide enough to get a cart full of ore through. No one would build a mine like this."
"If it's not a mine," Vilkas argues, voice hushed. "What else could it be?"
"A hideout. Think about it: with a bandit troop out front and only one point of entry, it would be impossible to sneak up on anyone down here." Her words send a chill down Vilkas's spine.
"A hideout for what?" He hisses, and she shrugs.
"Who knows. Necromancers? Vampires? Cultists? Could be anything. In any case, we'd better be careful."
The longer the tunnel continues, the more Vilkas feels a sense of foreboding creep into his chest. Rarely were the Companions contacted to deal with necromancers or miscreant wizards; more often than not, the mage faction from which the rogues had broken hired mercenaries to deal with their fallen brethren. As such, Vilkas wonders how to go about defending oneself from the undead. Could they be killed—or rather, re-killed—by conventional means? He finds himself cursing his unfamiliarity with all things magical. He could ask Mayenor, of course: as a trained mage, she was sure to know more about necromancy than he, at the very least; but Vilkas is loath to give her any reason to think of him as ignorant.
She stops abruptly, putting up a hand to signal that he should follow suit. He does, and instinct places him close by her side lest she need protection.
"What is it?" He breathes, straining to see something in the stretch of tunnel before them.
"We're getting close." Her words are barely more than a murmur.
"How can you tell?"
"The air's charged with Magicka. There's a mage down here—maybe more than one." She turns so they're facing one another, and his breath catches at her closeness.
"How much do you know about magic?"
"Not much," he admits, forcing himself to take a step back. Now is hardly the time for clouded thoughts.
"I thought so." Her tone is not, as Vilkas had feared, condescending. "Don't stand still. If he has to concentrate on hitting a moving target, his spells will be a little weaker. If you can, find something to hide behind when he releases a spell. Eventually, he'll run out of Magicka; when he does, get as close as you can and rely on melee attacks. Most mages are so dependent on their magic that they don't bother to learn traditional combat." She pauses, and purses her lips. "Then again, most mages who are doing experiments outside the College are powerful enough to kill their enemies before they can get close."
"I'm not so easily killed," he grunts, though there's a sickening twist in his gut. Even Mayenor's magic unnerves him; the thought of a stranger's magic being turned against him is enough to make his blood run cold.
"No," she agrees, and the shadow of a smile flickers across her mouth. "Let's go."
As they set off again, Vilkas begins to feel what he assumes is the Magicka in the air, an odd vibration that he can feel but somehow can't and that sends an ache through his bones. The feeling increases with every step they take, and finally, they hear the murmur of conversation ahead. Instinctively, they both crouch low, moving slowly with their bodies pressed against the rocky wall. Mayenor goes first, and Vilkas follows behind, trying to determine how many people wait beyond the doorway. She motions for him to wait, then crawls forward, stretching out her neck to peer out. Then, she withdraws into the shadows and holds up her fingers—seven. He nods, then draws his sword while she does the same; on the count of three, they burst into the room.
It's a medium-sized chamber hewn from the rough stone of the mountainside, lit by braziers placed around the walls. Vilkas quickly realizes that there's nowhere to hide in here: he and Mayenor are in full view from the moment they step into the flickering firelight. There are men on either side of the entrance to the room, and Mayenor spins to the right while Vilkas slashes down the bandit on the left.
Five more.
Vilkas loses track of Mayenor as he lunges forward to attack another bandit; from one corner of the room, he hears a rough shout, but he ignores it, focused on his prey. It isn't until he hears Mayenor's cry of 'Behind!' that he realizes another soldier snuck up on him; he launches a kick at his first victim and thrusts his greatsword into the belly of the man who had approached him from behind. To his surprise, the latter falls into a pile of glowing dust. Necromancy, a voice in his mind whispers, and he feels his heart falter.
He gives up counting how many men are left to fight; every time one falls, another corpse rises up to take his place. A quick glance shows that Mayenor is hardly faring any better; then, suddenly, three of the bandits around him turn to glowing dust, leaving him only two enemies to take care of. Once they're dealt with, he looks around to see Mayenor standing across the room, glowing dust piles and solid corpses scattered at her feet.
"Why did they all disappear?" He asks, slightly breathless, crossing to join her.
"I killed the necromancer keeping them alive," she replies distractedly; she's searching through the dead wizard's robes. "Is that all of them?"
"I'll check," he offers, eager to walk away from her desecration. Though he knows, logically, that dead men don't need coins, something about ravaging corpses strikes him wrong. Still, he puts her out of his mind and prowls around the room, ensuring there are no reinforcements hidden in unseen crevices. "All clear," he calls, turning his attention to the long table set against one wall. It's laden with bottles of mead and half-eaten food; beside it, he combs through a chest that holds raw meat and cooking spices. "Looks like they planned to be here a while. Wonder what they were doing?"
"Trying new necromancy spells." He'd mostly been talking to himself, but Mayenor answers nonetheless. "It looks like he was trying to figure out how to bring someone back to life permanently, and with their own will…"
"I don't get it." He falls into a chair and pours himself some mead.
"When a necromancer revives a corpse, they don't give the person their life back. They imbue the body with magical energy for a limited amount of time, and the zombie only follows its animator's orders. It can't think for itself. He was researching a permanent reanimation. He proposes taking life from one person and transferring the life force to the deceased… But that requires knowledge of what makes up the life force and how to command it…" She continues mumbling to herself, poring over hand-written journals as he buries himself in his mead, allowing his battle-tensed muscles to relax.
Neither of them hears the approaching footfalls, too absorbed in their own thoughts; Vilkas doesn't even look up until he hears a rock scatter across the uneven ground, and he glances over at Mayenor to make sure she's not about to try one of the dead necromancer's theoretical spells.
"Mayenor!" Her name comes out as a roar, and the goblet from which he'd been drinking clatters to the ground. He launches from his seat, drawing his sword as he barrels toward the woman that had managed to sneak up on them. She darts forward at the same time Mayenor turns to see what the ruckus is about, and the attacker's slashing blade catches Mayenor across the chest. Vilkas tries to block out the sound of her scream, so different than the one that had served as his signal. This scream is more of a yell, an expulsion of pain and something else—he fervently hopes it's not whatever makes up her hypothetical life force.
The attacker doesn't even have time to turn before Vilkas has separated her head from her neck; he kneels beside Mayenor even as the other woman's head rolls into a corner.
"Can you hear me?" He breathes, simultaneously wanting to hold her close and terrified to touch her. She nods, face a mask of agony. He does his best to ignore the panic welling in his chest, instead remembering his scant training in field medicine. Blood is bubbling up through a gash in her leather armor, and he pulls the material aside with trembling hands. The wound is relatively deep, but nothing important seems to have been severed: had they been close to Whiterun, a short stumble from the Temple of Kynareth, he'd hoist her over his shoulder and carry her to help.
But they're at least a day's ride from Whiterun and several hours from Rorikstead and Falkreath: her only hope rests with Vilkas, and he has little medical knowledge under normal circumstances, much less in an unsterile cave buried beneath a mountain. What's more, the blood within her wound is beginning to bubble, much like a pot of water over a hot fire.
"Poison," she gasps as though she's read his mind. Her voice is raspy and tight; a glance at her face shows him that her jaw is clenched against the pain. "Bag—potion-" she cuts off with a sharp hiss, and her arm starts to spasm. Without hesitation, he scrambles for the bag she'd set down while studying the necromancers' notes and upends it: countless bottles, plants, weapons, foodstuffs, books, and scrolls fall out. He'll wonder later how she manages to carry so much, but for now, he searches through the bottles until he finds one labeled "cure poison." By the time he gets back over to Mayenor, her breathing is shallow, but an odd light flickers around her fingers. It takes him a moment to realize that she's trying to heal herself even as her arm—he registers somewhere in the back of his mind that it's her left arm, her sword arm—jerks back and forth across the rocky ground of the cave.
His hands are shaking as he supports her head and tilts the small bottle to her lips; she swallows convulsively, and some of the potion within dribbles down her chin. He tells himself that she managed to swallow enough of the dark liquid, that she'll be fine—surely three drops aren't the difference between life and death.
Watching her spasms still to a slight but constant quiver, he loses track of time. Her head rests in his lap; her golden hair is matted crimson with drying blood, and he tries to comb through the tangles with shaking fingers. The sight of her blood on his hands makes his stomach roll, and it hits him, suddenly, that this is his fault. He should have been paying better attention to their surroundings, not drowning his senses in stale mead; he knows and has always known that she loves to lose herself in academia. And now, because he'd been a fool, she lies bleeding in his lap.
As she continues to shudder in his arms, he begins to pray.