A/N: Apologies for the lateness of this update, time passes, things get in the way, you know how it is *shrug*. But it's here now, so nae complaining, ya hear?

Tired, footsore and nervous, Seifer shifted Quistis' weight on his shoulder. They had agreed very quickly considering the events of the early morning that the best mode of travel was for Quistis to be draped over Seifer's shoulder, facing the back and she was so far doing a grand job of keeping lookout behind them. There had been, of course, nothing of note thus far which was just as well as Seifer was feeling rather more like a flighty nag than he would have liked. Try as he might, he simply could not force the memories of that morning from his head.

The ankle, for he had an excellent view of it from where he lay, was a gruesome affair. The stump itself was the product of a powerful blow which had cleft the foot from the limb and was mostly likely the cause of death for the then amputee. Seifer had no doubts that the owner of the ankle was a walking dead. The force of the blow had shattered the end of the tibia and the crushed end had disintegrated over the course of the march, leaving the flesh covered in little flecks of bone and flapping in the breeze. When the leg had landed in the mud the loose end of the muscle 'sock' had bunched up into a wrinkled bulb and the heads of several maggots were squeezed from various holes in the rotting flesh by the pressure. The stench it gave off was simply out of this world.

With the sudden passing of the ankle's partner limb, the bracken was kicked from the entrance way, leaving their hiding place entirely exposed.

Quistis, for her part, seemed terrified, already having turned her face into the mud and whispered a quick 'no' to the earth. He swore he could hear her blood pumping, her heart seemed to be beating that fast. The sound of his own blood was rushing in his ears and another set of feet passed them by. For whatever reason, the dead were on the march.

He was not fond the dead, even as a monster hunter. They were notoriously hard to kill and quite often refused to stay dead. He frequently turned down jobs involving the dead because he got so very tired fighting them, the battles seemed never-ending and whilst they may not have been able to find quiet in death, he most certainly wouldn't have that problem.

As Quistis' delicate form began to shake, wracked with fear, he pulled her closer against his chest. He would never be able to recall the thoughts or feelings which lead him to exhibit such protectiveness towards her, but whatever it was, was strong enough to have him pulling a long, thin bladed knife from his boot and, putting an arm over her so that he could reach, pointing it at the entrance to the den.

As his weight shifted, Quistis turned her face upward from the ground and they locked eyes in the dim light of dawn. Her eyes held fear, desperation and no small amount of panic. He dreaded to think what his eyes held, but he dared not look away from her dark orbs, glistening in the blackness. They stared at each other for a long while, until the sounds of those few undead had long since passed and they could both return to their sleep.

Naturally neither of them did, but it was a long while still until Quistis braved the outside. Seifer would have been out long ago, wanting very badly to escape from the small hole he was trapped in, but she seemed to view it more as a safe haven than a trap. Of course, being the one furthest from the entrance, Seifer had no choice but to wait until Quistis deemed it safe, but the more time he had to think about what he had seen, the less inclined he really was to leave.

"The smell." Quistis' warning brought him smartly from his memories and he stopped dead on the track. The smell was back just as she'd said, sickly sweet, like old, crystallised honey, but overlaid with the thick, musty stink of mould. He cast about for the source, staring grimly into the surrounding foliage, but finding nothing.

Carefully, so as not to deal her injured leg any undue jolts, he bent forward and lowered her legs to the ground. She stood shakily on one leg and clung to his shoulders to keep herself upright. They both looked around.

Their surroundings had changed gradually as they'd walked and the trees had thinned ever so slightly, changing from the gnarled old spruce and sycamores of the plateau, to birch trees, aspen and larch. The terrain had changed too and they were now on a gentle slope, running away to a valley, in which most likely stood the towering edifice of the Imperial city, if they were going in the correct direction. The stream had left them long ago, disappearing into a hole in the ground and crashing away through some underground water system, no doubt to re-join them further down the valley.

Quistis was incredibly unsteady on her feet and although he was no longer holding her, Seifer still seemed to bear most of her weight. Not that there was much of it, she was skinnier than a mouse and lighter than one besides. She looked this way and that, sniffing the air.

Seifer followed suit, sniffing first in one direction, then the other. Everywhere smelt equally awful as far as he could tell, but Quistis seemed to think that one direction smelt particularly bad because she pointed him off to his left, her right. "There."

He craned his neck to see anything, but there was very little to see through the trees. "What d'you think it is?"

"Outhouse."

"Oh come on, woman," He groaned, giving her an unimpressed look, "We stopped for a shit a few minutes ago! You can't need another one, you haven't eaten anything!"

She thumped a hand against his chest and glared up at him, face red, "No! Outhouse means people!"

Oh. He craned his neck again. People, eh? Probably hostile, covered in shit, but honest to goodness people… "They won't be elves, you know." He said as he crouched to allow her to fold over his shoulder again, "And they won't be friendly."

"They smell dead." She replied bluntly, as though it didn't matter one way or the other to her. He had to concede, she had a point. If they smelt as bad as their shithouse then yes, they were probably already dead.

They walked off in the direction Quistis had indicated and sure enough a different smell, but no less unpleasant began to assail Seifer's nostrils. By the time they came across a clearing, sporting a number of burnt, dilapidated huts and a few sheds, the smell was so bad that Seifer was struggling to carry Quistis much further as he was, with one hand over his nose. He put her back on her feet at the edge of the treeline and she too was holding her nose, with both hands.

"Sday here." He said, nasally, "Don't bove."

She looked unhappy with that idea, but he had already moved too far away for her to grab him and hold him back.

Both hands over his nose, but ears pricked and eyes searching for any signs of movement, Seifer advanced on the small mountain settlement. There appeared in total to be nine huts, four small dwellings, two which were clearly outhouses and three barn like buildings. They were laid out in a peculiar fashion, the biggest of the barns in the middle of the collection, the four small huts and the outhouses forming a ring around it, the two remaining barns standing downhill from the collection and a final saw mill standing behind those. The mill looked horse driven and Seifer assumed that at least one of the barns had to contain horses, although both of the outer ones were horribly burnt and he doubted that any horses living in those would have survived, if any remained at all.

The ground was soaked in piss, he noticed as he entered the ring of huts. It was clear now that the four smaller huts no doubt belonged to the mill owner, his workers and their families. Whatever calamity had rained down on these poor people had clearly rendered them all incontinent because there were streaks of excrement trod into the blackened, charred dirt.

Seifer approached one of the houses and gingerly removed a hand from his nose to free his battle axe and nudge the door open with it. The inside was a mess, broken pottery and vegetable matter littered the floor. The bed was upturned, the sheets tipped out onto the floor and a number of chests and trunks were gaping open, their contents pilfered. It looked as though the place had been ransacked. As an expert monster hunter, he could safely say that the undead did not stop to gather loot and thus were not the culprits of this particular raid, if indeed this was a raid at all.

The next house he inspected looked much the same, only this one was burnt inside, the pot of soup from the hearth having spilt over the floor and the fuel from the fire being dashed across the hearth rug by a hurried pair of feet. The fur rug had caught like a pile of dry straw laced in fine wine and the rest of the residence had followed suit fairly quickly.

He exited the house and looked about, wondering what had happened here to cause such a hurry and a mess. He frowned when he saw Quistis limping quickly across the clearing towards him. Hadn't he told her to stay put?

He stomped over to her, about to launch into a speech about helping each other by following orders when he she cut him off, stumbling sharply and grabbing hold of him to stop her descent.

"Dead. In the twees. Balking."

He snapped his head up to stare in the direction from whence she'd come. He couldn't see what she apparently had, but if the tremor in her voice and the tears streaming down her face were anything to go by, then it was about time he found those horses and they hot footed it out of there.

"Sday here." He said again, turning away to leave, but her grip on him was firm and she clung on.

"Doe." She choked. "Don't."

"Dook, dere bight be sobe horses id here." He said, trying in vain to pry her fingers from his arm. "I'm go'ig to check de bard."

"Take be too!" She said, voice cracking and he looked up from her fingers to find her breathing heavy and erratic. Her eyes spoke of desperation and fear. It was the same look she'd given him that morning. It was one he couldn't resist.

Wordlessly, he bent and grabbed her legs, hefting her over his shoulder and ignoring her yelp of pain. He turned to go for the barn just as the first walking dead appeared between the trees, just as she'd said. Taking long strides, Seifer loped to the barn in the centre of the settlement, Quistis' choked urges to 'hurry' sounding in time with the thumps she delivered to his back. He had no doubts that her gaze was fixed squarely on the approaching zombies.

Throwing open the barn door proved to be a big mistake. Not only did it release a cloud of green bottle flies into his face, offsetting his balance, but it spooked the only horse in there, tied to one of the support beams by a rope headcollar. It was a big bay draft horse. He stood taller than Seifer at the withers, flanks sleek with sweat and knee deep in muck. But he was alive and a horse. That was good enough.

Seifer dumped Quistis roughly on her feet and rushed over to the frightened animal. The creature reared its head when he approached, but a firm, steady hand on its neck and an encouraging 'hush' from Seifer and it was just calm enough to be manageable.

Quickly, Seifer waved Quistis over, picking her up and seating her over the horse's withers. He skittered about as Quistis wound her fingers into his mane, but Seifer held him firm, untying the headcollar and grabbing a handful of his mane for guidance. He dragged the horse to an upturned wooden bucket and used it as a stepping stone to help him make the leap up onto its back.

The poor, frightened beast began running before Seifer even had his leg over its bottom, but Quistis' vice-like grip on his armour ensured he wasn't going anywhere. They careened over the threshold as the first of a long line of undead passed through the circle of huts.

Quistis wiped her face once their steed had slowed enough for her to risk taking her hand from his mane. Behind her, Seifer was breathing hard from the effort of steering their flighty beast with just his legs but they had gone a good long way from the settlement and neither of them had fallen off yet.

Her leg was absolute agony. The Nord, Seifer, had her round the waist with one hand and the horse with the other, but he was holding her in such a way that her broken leg was over the horse's withers and it was bumping painfully with every stride the weary animal took.

She had never been a fan of horses, much preferring to hoof it from place to place, as it were. She tried to shift her weight off her uncomfortable perch and, much to her surprise, found a pair of hands willing to help. Their mount continued to amble on down the hill as Seifer and Quistis struggled to move her broken leg to the horse's other shoulder.

Eventually, when she sat astride its shoulders, Seifer asked, "Why are you so afraid of the dead?"

She didn't know what to say to that. The implication was, of course, that he wasn't afraid. But then he was a monster hunter so she supposed it went with the territory. At her lack of an answer, he continued. "Something must have happened in your past to spawn this kind of terror. It's incredibly profound – not that I'm too fond of the things myself, but you were nigh unshakeable on Highbridge, taking on a whole legion of Dremora Lords singlehanded. What makes a woman like you run crying for help?"

"My leg." She said stiffly. She had not been running for 'help', she had merely thought to… Warn him of the impending danger. He was her ticket to survival after all, she couldn't let him go and get himself killed. His sense of smell was awfully dull and he clearly hadn't felt the things coming or he'd have been out of there like an arrow from a bow. She was looking out for her own benefits. That was all.

"Right – you needed me to help you escape." He mused aloud, "But you must have known I would protect you or you wouldn't have come looking for me. So, why were you so terrified, if you already knew all this."

"I wasn't."

"You don't remember being scared?" His voice was dripping with sarcasm as he detailed his scepticism. "Sure, your memory only lasts so long, of course it does, you just had the most part of a mountain bouncing off your nut a week ago." A snort of derision. "How about in the burrow? What was so frightening about that?"

A burrow? She wondered he gave it such a delicate name. "That hole was not advantageous. We could not fight in there."

"That wasn't plain battle nerves, Princess," He said and she cursed the stubbornness of Nords. "You were shaking like a leaf. What is so scary about a twice dead thing stomping on your welcome mat?."

"Maggots?" She said, with a mostly sarcastic air. Hell, what wasn't scary about the undead? They were the closest thing to immortal on this plane, they weren't confined to the normal strength limitations of living flesh and they had maggots and all sorts of ooze squirting out of all the holes in their bodies.

She felt his soft huff blow the hairs on the back of her neck. "You're scared of the dead because they've got maggots. Some company you'll be fishing." He whispered.

He kept half an eye on their surroundings as they moved, trusting the horse to bolt if it sensed danger, as he was distracted as long locks of gleaming golden tresses cascaded over his chest as Quistis removed the stick from her hair. She ran her fingers through it, fluffing it a little and he was transfixed. There didn't appear to be a single knot in the whole lot, despite the ordeal it had been through over the last few days. The river water did not seem to have suited it however because instead of the silken sheet he had seen gracing the she-elf's head, the human's hair was ever so slightly frizzy. He knew it to be extremely soft because he had had his face buried in it this morning in the burrow.

So long was he staring at Quistis' hair that he didn't even realise they had stopped. Suddenly coming to his senses, he urged the horse forward, only for Quistis' elbow to bury in his armoured gut. How did she do that? He was wearing armour and still the needle point of her elbow managed to make its way through to cause him pain.

"Path, idiot." She snapped crossly as he rubbed a gloved hand over his twinging abdomen. They had come to a fork in the road and the horse, unsure of which way to go, had stopped to wait for directions. The path to the right led off down a leafy, winding decline into the valley below, its end invisible for the trees. The path to the left led around the hillside they were currently on, travelling along something of a ridge, bereft of trees a few hundred yards along but made treacherous by loose shale on the road.

"Which way do you think?" He asked, unable to decide by himself.

"Not sure. Left is exposed. But right is dull."

"Dark?"

"Uninteresting."

He raised an eyebrow. They were possibly running for their lives and she was deciding the path of fate based on how boring each one looked? He shook his head. "So, left?"

She nodded and he steered the horse to point down the left path. He would have to dismount and lead their small party by hand soon, the weary horse would fair far better with only one of them to carry on uneven ground.

"You know," He began, feeling a little as though they were travelling in the complete wrong direction, "We're going to have to find people and rally forces at some point."

She shrugged.

"That means were going to be going to the White Tower."

She shrugged again.

"It means you'll probably get locked away for helping the Dominion."

"Your point?"

He shifted his weight, bottom beginning to go numb. "Why don't you tell me why you disguised yourself as an elf and tried to take over Highbridge?"

It wasn't a question really so much as an order.

"Why should I?" The more he got her to talk the better her grasp of the common tongue became. It was a pity her manners weren't also improving at the same rate.

"Because I'm the only thing standing between you and a pair of shackles, darling, so you might want to start warming up to me."

"You're too close." She said hotly.

"What?" He asked, confused, close?

"I said you're too close." She repeated herself, turning her head to give him a look over her shoulder and accompanying this with another elbow to the gut. "I'm too hot."

"I'm barely touching you." He growled, temper fraying, "And I'm getting pretty sick of all this rough treatment, if you don't mind. Don't forget whose axe you're holding yourself together with, who pulled you off the mountain top, who saved your sorry arse from the dead back there and who carried you all this way. You had better start being nice or you're walking the rest of the way."

"Rest of the way where?" She snapped, gesturing widely with her arms. "We're going nowhere! There's nowhere here!"

"We're going to the Citadel." He said narkily, shoving away from her and swinging his right leg over the horse's rump. Still holding tightly to the headcollar, he strode round to the other side of the horse and looked up at his cold companion. She had her arms folded and a snooty expression on her face.

"Why?"

"Because someone has to warn them about what's happening?" He said, posing it as a question because really, it ought to have been obvious. It was what any good soul would do. Did elves have souls? He sincerely wondered about that sometimes…

500 meters along the path the two were to take there stood a rock edifice, with a number of protrusions and a long, smooth crack running along it, making the mouth of this stony effigy. From the gloom of this scar peered a man. He was clad in light, leather armour from top to toe, the whole thing stained black with nightshade leaves and adorned with the crest of the house of Estharius – two horned puff-adders curling around the sprig of a lemon tree. Though not wearing the standard livery, he was marked quite clearly as a scout.

He lay flat on his belly, barely thin enough to fit comfortably in the rocky wound, and had his eyes fixed on the alluring, injured beauty and the heavily armoured Nord who lead her tired mount. His first assumption was that she was some dignitary, foreign by her clothing, and the Nord was her escort. She would be on her way to the Imperial Citadel to discuss the impending siege and the Nord would likely then serve as her bodyguard in a capital of pick-pockets and opportunists.

Seeing the axe bound to her thigh and the state of the horse, not to mention the rather underhanded way with which the Nord treated her, his first assumption was dashed to the four winds. Now he suspected she was simply an escapee from an undead raid, the horse was her only means of escape from the unfortunate scene and the Nord was some unsuspecting passer-by she had roped into protecting her with money or blackmail, or other, more sinister means.

Even that theory, however, raised questions. Such as their intended destination and level of armament. And whether or not they knew that their current heading would lead them straight to the Estharius encampment on Weathertop Ridge.

Weathertop was an easily defensible stone fort mounted on a ridge in the time of Tiber Septim. It had been a focal location in his battle against the forces of Oblivion and despite having suffered somewhat at the hands of the elements, was still a place worthy of note today. The fort sat perched atop a rocky outcrop with sheer drops on the South, East and Western sides. Devoid of trees, the steep approach from the North was horribly exposed and made any advancing soldiers easy pickings for the archers who loosed their arrows from the battlements. The path on the Northern side was usually studded with sharp, meter long stakes fashioned from the surrounding forest that fell away on both sides of the path. The Supreme Commander had ordered these away however to make way for his troops and rather than wooden death traps, the frontal approach was now littered with white tents, all bearing the insignia of Estharius.

The scout kept incredibly still as the Nord and the lady – he was unsure as to whether she was another Nord, or a Breton, or similar – travelled past. They were arguing about the ethics of Zombie warfare and whether or not 'everybody for themselves' was a viable battle plan.

Once they had moved back into the cover of the trees, the scout wriggled free of his hidey hole and dropped onto the unstable path, knocking a few slivers of shale off the edge. They bounced away down the valley-side, bouncing noisily off other rocks and creating a tiny slide. Ignoring it, he took off in the opposite direction to the one in which the pair had gone. It would take him a lot longer going by this route, but with any luck the Nord and his lady would remain at walking pace and he would have the time needed to outpace them.

Supreme Commander Loire would want to know of their arrival before they arrived.

A/N: Alrighty then, you know, sometimes I consider myself to be a literary genius - this looks like one of those times. Oh how I chortle at my own jokes.

You know the game plan - leave a review, I send you a cyber-cookie.

Toodles,

-Lapin