A/N: In-game any arrow can pierce any armor when wielded at any skill level, but this makes no logical sense, so I'm throwing it out.
Chapter 8
It took some time to reach the beginning of hilly terrain. Ebel-Merodach began to notice two things before that: first, the glaring white-yellow sun overhead seemed to be moving slowly toward the horizon, and second, Menien Goneld was slowing down. His face showed no discomfort that Merodach was able to discern, but there was a thin sheen of sweat on the bald top of his head. He has lived among the Kyn. He knows what happens when one of us is weak.
"What do mortals live on?" said Ebel-Merodach.
"Why?" said Menien Goneld. He had stopped much earlier to tie some sort of vegetation around his feet, although this seemed to be having limited effect. Blood seeped out between the wads of leaves occasionally, no doubt leaving a more conspicuous trail than Merodach's boots possibly could.
"Because I do not wish to carry both you and the loathsome one, and I cannot afford to leave you behind," said Ebel-Merodach.
"We'll hunt up something once we get off the plain," said Goneld, in between deep breaths. "Until then, you'll have to put up with me. I've been living in a godsdamned cage for I-don't-know-how-long. We're lucky I can walk at all."
"What predators live here?" said Merodach.
"Not many in this part of the country," Goneld said, and paused to breathe. "Mountain lions. Ogres. Imps."
Merodach did not recognize any of the words, but Goneld didn't seem to think whatever-they-were would be much of a problem. Merodach loosened his mace in its thong at his hip anyway. It was obvious neither Sodrinye nor the mortal were likely to be useful if an attack did materialize.
"I forgot one," said Menien Goneld. As he squinted through the waning glare, Merodach saw something like a path up ahead, curving in from their right and winding up into the hills. It was lined with flat, irregularly-shaped rocks. Someone was hiding in the taller foliage off to the side of the path. Merodach could hear them scuffing their feet.
"And what is that?" said Merodach.
"Bandits," said Menien Goneld.
An arrow whistled past Merodach's ear. He dropped the Sleeper and drew his mace at the same time, ignoring the resultant heavy thud.
"Hand over what you've got, conjurer," said a voice, and then a tall mortal stepped out onto the path. His armor seemed to be made from some sort of animal hide. His hair was long, more or less pale, and very dirty.
Merodach thoughtfully inspected the bow the man held in one grubby gauntlet. It seemed to be made of some vegetable matter bound with metal. Not daedric metal. Not even Dremora. The arrow he held nocked was similarly constructed. "What did he call you?" Merodach said to Goneld.
"He thinks I summoned you," Goneld said. He raised his voice so that the other man could hear him. "I've got nothing but scars, Nord. You're welcome to as many of those as you want."
The only reply was another arrow. Merodach stepped in front of it and watched as it pinged off his pauldron.
"Do you know why there are no bandits in Oblivion?" said Ebel-Merodach.
"I can guess," said Menien Goneld.
Merodach threw his belt knife left-handed. There was a thunk. He watched warily in case the mortal fired again, but apparently human reflexes were less stubborn than those of kyn. The man dropped dead about a second after the knife buried itself in his eye socket. Merodach retrieved the knife, listening carefully. There was nothing to indicate the presence of further bandits. He wiped the blade on the man's greaves and went to get Sodrinye.
"Do most low-castes throw that well?" said Menien Goneld. He went to kneel next to the body. Merodach quelled a snarl. The Nord was an unworthy kill, and besides, Goneld was merely removing the man's boots.
"No," Ebel-Merodach said. "I have twenty-five hundred souls. And two."
"Doesn't mean a thing to me," Goneld said. "But then, time doesn't pass the same way there, does it. I feel like I ought to be about a hundred years old by now."
Merodach grunted as he hoisted the Sleeper. "A hundred what?"
"Years," Goneld said. "A year is three hundred and sixty-five days. A day is how long it takes the sun to rise and set and rise again. And for a human, a hundred years is a lifetime."
"Your lives are short," Merodach said. "And you are not permitted further incarnation. Why do you not despair?"
Goneld smiled without humor. There was something in his face that Merodach could not quite recognize, because no immortal can truly understand what it is to be old. "Some of us do." He edged back warily as Merodach knelt and slung Sodrinye down next to the bandit. "What are you doing?"
"She will recover faster if she drinks," said Merodach.
Menien Goneld curled his lip, but did not comment further. "I need his armor and his weapons."
"I am not sure I should allow you to be armed," Merodach said.
Goneld shot him a look. "Can you afford for me not to be?"
He was right, of course. Merodach muttered to himself momentarily, then said, "Do it quickly." He did not move away from the body as Goneld knelt beside it. The human stripped away the corpse's cuirass, greaves and boots with practiced movements. The man was wearing some sort of garment between his armor and his skin. It was not very clean. Goneld tore it off along with the rest and hauled the lot off to one side.
"Stay where I can see you," said Merodach. Then he seized the Nord by the hair. He dragged the corpse nearer to Sodrinye and sliced across the big artery and vein in the side of his neck.
Blood spurted. Merodach was beginning to feel thirsty himself, by this time. Not so thirsty that he would stoop to such prey, however – particulary while he was debtsworn. Let the loathsome one have him, he thought, and shoved Sodrinye's head under the flow of blood.
The stuff in the mortal's vessels moved slower than the blood of a kynaz, and it seemed cold where it splashed onto Merodach's gauntlets. He could see Sodrinye swallowing – her throat bobbed every so often under its new coat of red – but it was so thin that it could hardly be very nourishing. From the corner of his eye, he saw Goneld peel the bloody scraps of grass off his feet and replace them with the torn garment the Nord had worn.
When the corpse's blood pressure fell to a trickle, then a few drops, he tossed the man into the bushes and picked Sodrinye up again. She had never opened her eyes.
"We'll attract wild animals if you leave blood on her," said Goneld. He stood up with his new armor on, testing his weight in the boots. Merodach, watching with predatory curiosity, did not see him show any further discomfort.
"She will absorb it quickly," said Merodach. "She is thirsty."
"She'll what?" said Goneld. "Never mind, I don't want to know." He looked consideringly at the bloodstain on the road. "Thatwill still be here. If you wipe your boots we won't leave as much of a trail."
"Hmph," Merodach said, conveying his scorn of a world where the earth was too lazy to take up spilt blood, but he scuffed his boots briefly in the spongy ground cover before they went on.
They walked. The sun declined further toward the rim of the world. Sodrinye hung down Merodach's back like the weight of guilt, still uncommunicative and unmoving. Through his armor he could not feel her breathe, though his bare hand on her ankle did register a faint, steady heartbeat. He had hung his gauntlets on his belt so that he could keep track. Goneld glanced at them periodically. Once he frowned. "Are you sure she's alive?"
Merodach snorted. "I am debtsworn, mortal. If she dies, I will be the first to know."
Goneld shot him a look he could not read and said no more. It was unlikely that he understood. He was, after all, only mortal. They walked on into the dying light. Merodach watched the sky turn from aching blue to a more familiar red, but it quickly darkened into black. Tiny pinpoints of light flickered far above. They gave even less light than the red sky of Dagon's plane. If all of them were of the same origin as the sun, there must be a great many holes in the plane of Nirn, Merodach thought. One would think this wretched place would be easier to reach.
He was preoccupied with trying to keep track of his environment and not trip in the dark, so it startled him when Sodrinye's voice said, "Ebel-Merodach." He very nearly let her fall back over his shoulder, but he caught her legs just in time.
"Ah, so the little fool with the grand ideas is awake again," he said in the Kyntongue.
"Where are we?" Sodrinye said. Her voice was quiet but steady.
Merodach rolled his eyes in the dark. "We are where you brought us, ugly one. I assume it is Nirn. The mortal seems to think so."
"Put me down," Sodrinye said. Merodach unslung her from his shoulder and dropped her onto the ground, albeit more gently than he might have done before. There was a soft sound of impact as she landed on her posterior, then her backHe watched, squinting through the darkness, as she slid over onto her side. She did not sit up. "Menien Goneld."
"Still here, girl," Goneld said. If he intended this to provoke annoyance, it evidently did not succeed. But then, he had been growing increasingly irascible, and Merodach had not failed to notice the blood leaking from a seam in his patched boot. He couldn't see it in the dark. It didn't matter.
"We are in Cyrodiil," Sodrinye said. A flash of glowing violet was momentarily visible as she raised herself on one elbow. It was not a question, but Goneld answered as if it had been.
"As best I can tell, yes," Goneld said. "I think we're somewhere East of the Imperial City."
"Have you found the palace yet?"
Goneld cocked his head. "What palace?"
"White walls," Sodrinye said. "A broken statue, an armored warrior with a sword. There are those inside whom Merodach will kill."
"At last," Merodach said with some satisfaction. Sodrinye moved her head in a way he could not interpret.
"It will be easy for you to diminish your debt, but purge it you cannot. I cannot let you die in this plane, caitiff."
"I doubt whether you can prevent it," Merodach said.
"I'm not so sure," said Menien Goneld.
"Silence," Merodach said. If Goneld was even slightly intimidated, he didn't show it.
"You cannot be in danger without my knowledge. I will wake," said Sodrinye.
"That doesn't sound very demonlike," Goneld said. He folded his arms. Merodach stared down at Sodrinye in the dark, stunned yet again by the placid statement of utter heresy. A flicker of violet indicated she was looking back. Then he saw her weakly lift one hand, and a green glow sprang up around her. It lit the three of them and the surrounding path for yards in every direction. Sodrinye let her head fall onto one shoulder as she looked at Merodach.
He did not look away from that miles-long stare. He was angry, as he had often been since their first meeting, but it was time he put that aside. He was trapped in Nirn. There was probably no other kynaz but Sodrinye within a thousand miles of him. He needed to understand more than anything.
"There is no reciprocity in the debtbond," he said slowly. "That is not Kyn."
"Why did you think I killed the kynval?" Sodrinye said. Her voice was even, devoid of any impatience or amusement.
"Because you require protection, and you cannot control the mortal," Merodach said.
"Glad to hear it," Goneld said. Merodach ignored him.
"It is even so," Sodrinye said. "Mortal emotion is strange. But I could have let the kynval kill you, and done to her as I did to you. She would have been a more powerful protector than you are."
Merodach could not deny the strict justice of this, since he had been pointedly avoiding telling himself exactly the same thing. "Then why?" he said. "What are you? What have you made me?"
When the dark kynaz next spoke, there was a faint bell of discord in her voice that had not been there before. Merodach knew Goneld heard it too, because he looked sharply at her as soon as she said it. "You are what you choose to be," Sodrinye said. "I am still a Sleeper. You came to me, and so I brought you."
"That is no answer," Merodach said.
"But I did choose well," Sodrinye said. The discord changed slowly into unfamiliar euphony. It vibrated oddly in his ears, bearing some message he could not read. "Another might harm me while I slept, and carry the weight of debt only so far as the preservation of my life. You have not."
"You do not know that," Merodach said. He was reluctant, however futilely, to place himself any further under her power than he already was. You hold your honor too dear, she had told him at their first meeting. This, unfortunately for Merodach, was the truth.
"It's true, though," said Menien Goneld. "I've noticed."
"May Dagon eat your soul," said Merodach, without much feeling. Goneld, who had once spat on him from inside a cage, only laughed. Sodrinye exhaled sharply, probably the closest she could come to a laugh herself. Her voice became relatively ordinary again, merely high and thin rather than ethereal.
"I would still know. There is new blood in my veins, and it does not belong to Menien Goneld." She shoved against the ground, pushing herself into a half-seated position with her legs awkwardly bent. Her joints behaved as if they were made of unoiled iron, stiff and unwieldy. Merodach watched as she turned her attention to Goneld.
"Take off your boots," she said.
"Why?" said Goneld.
"So that I can see your feet."
Goneld looked at her for a moment. Then he sat down in the circle of green light on the roadbed and pulled off one boot. It did not come off easily, though the Nord must have had bigger feet than the Imperial. Merodach began to pace a slow circle around the two of them, looking away from the light and out into the dark. They were among low hills and trees, but there was no saying who or what might be attracted to an obviously magical illumination here.
The human had his other boot off now. The wrappings on his feet were dark with blood. "Take them off," said Sodrinye. Merodach, as he turned with his back to them, heard a quiet curse in Cyrodilic as Goneld peeled the bandages away. He kept his face turned away to avoid being blinded by the pulse of blue light that followed. The Sleeper has no more grasp of moderation than she has of tact. She is not cunning. And yet we still live, and are in Nirn. There was red light next, and a soft whomph of flame as she burnt the old bandages.
"Why would you do that?" Goneld said. Merodach circled them again in time to see him flexing his toes. His pale skin was entirely whole.
"Our need for a guide is not diminished," Sodrinye said.
"But you know where you're going," Goneld said. He reached for his boots. "You've got the caitiff here. And I'm not good for much any more." He said it without much emotion, as a simple statement of the facts.
"You will be to us," said Sodrinye. "Imperials swear oaths, do they not?"
"All the time," Goneld said. He pulled the boots fully on and stood up. "But you're not talking about cursing, are you."
"I want your word that you will do no harm to Ebel-Merodach."
"He never sleeps, he's armed, and he's wearing full heavy armor," Goneld said. "You should make me swear I'll do no harm to you."
She moved her head to the left once, as if it were too much effort to complete a headshake. "You will not harm a helpless person without some cause. I give you none."
"Are you sure of that?" said Ebel-Merodach.
"Debt is not the same for him as for you," Sodrinye said, without taking her eyes from Menien Goneld. "And he hates Dremora with good cause. But he is what his language would call an honest man."
"That's right," said Menien Goneld, with a species of bitter humor. "And look how far it's gotten me."
"Swear," Sodrinye said.
"I swear I won't hurt the godsdamned caitiff," Goneld said. "Is that enough for you?"
"Find an animal and a place to make a fire," Sodrinye said to Merodach. "Drink its blood, and give its flesh to the mortal. He will eat nothing that speaks."
"It will be done," said Ebel-Merodach. Sodrinye's eyes were already closed.