Skyrim is the property of Bethesda Softworks. As usual, it's been a little bit. The typing and brainstorming goes on and the followups to this story are coming together bit by bit. Before I forget: Thanks for reading.
There is no more dreadful moment for a commander than when he sees his most hopeful plans evaporate and his command evaporate with them. The Gods have been very kind to me that I have yet to share the fate of Legate Emmanuel Admand and the 2nd Nibenayan Legion.
It must have started out with so much promise: A runner would have thundered into camp on his charger, seeking out the first officer he could find.
The news would have reached Legate Admand's ears in a flash: Scouts had spotted Jarl Skald's militia in the highlands of the northwestern Pale. The shouting must have begun at a quiet word from the Legate to his Tribune of the Camp and from there sparked waves of noise within the wooden piles of the camp. In a few short hours all that would remain of the camp would be the square earthworks and beaten ground.
In the meantime runners would have been sent out to find Legate Sevan Telendas. His 42nd Highrock Legion was tasked with repairing and provisioning the forts of the Pale for the legions' winter quarters. Telendas must have been working his men to the bone: Winter was coming on fast in north-central Skyrim, where the forests of the Pale met the mountains of Eastmarch to hold the glaciers of Winterhold at bay.
But being dutiful, Legate Telendas would have stripped his forts of every soldier he could afford to reinforce his field-bound colleague. Since his ouster from Dawnstar, Jarl Skald and his men had been a thorn in the Imperial side throughout the northern holds.
The early winter weather deteriorated as scouts led the reinforced legion north and west. The freezing rain stung the noses of the soldiers, officers, followers, and horses. It would freeze in a thick crust on armor and wagons. Leather would soak, swell, become heavy and stiff. Bow strings would become slack and shields cumbersome.
Elements of Skald's retreating militia would eventually have been spotted squeezing through a mountain pass. The light infantry of the 42nd must have sprung ahead, soaking gear notwithstanding, to bring the elusive enemy to heel. The heavier troops of Admand's legion would remain in column-of-march until the last minute.
The fast-running light infantry would just be banging shields with Skald's men when the nearby Stormcloak general sprang his trap.
Four divisions—nearly eight thousand rebel soldiers—rushed down from the heights where they'd waited, rested and dry for Legate Admand's headlong rush.
In open order they must have crashed furious and screaming into the marching columns of heavy infantry. The legionnaires would be vulnerable in their columns, perilously so for their fatigue and sodden equipment. A few tent groups or perhaps a century would have had the time to form and face the threat, but the second wave of men and women coming down from the hills would break the scattered formations. The survivors must have been chased for miles out onto the glacial wastes of Winterhold.
The 2nd Niebnayan Legion was annihilated. No survivors of that unit or the supporting cohorts of the 42nd ever reported back to the rest of the legions in Skyrim. Beneath the grey clouds of the early winter storm, a revitalized Stormcloak army swept the depleted garrisons of the 42nd's forts one by one. Ulfric's blue banner was planted along the east-west road from Driftshade to Morthal. They checked at Fort Snowhawk in sight of Haafingar and the 1st Imperial Legion. Both sides sharpened steel and waited for the Karth River to freeze.
Scattered reports came to Fort Greenwall. I'm sure messengers went to the quarters of the 77th and 25th as well, for their Legates and aides arrived at the gallop. Tullius and the 9th Legion planned to remain at Fort Greenwall for the winter interbellum. Falling as it did between centurion and tribune, my rank rated a private room with Aela inside the curtain wall. An enterprising messenger knocked on our door, telling me my presence would be needed in Tullius's ward room shortly.
I was glad for the distraction. Aela and I were a quiet pair, but there was even less between us in the weeks since Riften. No words could describe how angry she was, so she remained quiet. For my part there were no words I could use: I wasn't sorry. I was glad that she was safe. So we stayed quiet. The only sign that we still loved each other was the fact that we shared a bed.
I was among the handful of officers in the chamber, watching curiously as General Tullius read and re-read a dispatch with his arms supporting his body over the table. His habitual scowl deepened. The jowls below his jaw quivered. His tanned, healthy complexion appeared to turn grey and hang from his powerful frame. I glanced to Legate Rikke, his second in command. She shook her head slowly. We waited with baited breath.
The explosion went off a short minute later. The Tullius's right fist came down hard enough to make the wood of the table crack. "Legate Admand give me back my legions!" He bellowed in a voice that carried throughout the castle. He tossed the report to an alarmed Legate Rikke. She turned wax-pale as she read the letter and passed it to her fellow legates.
Tullius began issuing orders as he circled his chart table like a caged animal, "We must get what's left of the 42nd under control. Legate Rikke, tell Centurion Cipius that he's a tribune now. Any of the 42nd to rejoin will be sent to him at Fort Amol."
He paused for a moment to gaze at the map of the territory to our north: an expanse of geysers and hot springs that wedged the road to Windhelm almost over the border with Morrowind. "Jarl Elisif will have to defend her hold on her own. The 1st Imperial is to attack over Dragonbridge at once. Tell Legate Constantius not to stop until he reaches Windhelm.
He pondered the map in silence again, "Legates, prepare the soldiers here to march north. We will be leaving for Windhelm in two days."
They thumped their fists on their armored breastplates as one and left.
I was the next to receive orders. "Ieago, Fort Kastav not mentioned in the dispatch. You are to go there and find out what happened. If the garrison remains, you are to have them withdraw and join Cipius's new command. If you can, find out what happened to Legate Telendas. From what I can gather, he wasn't present at Admand's Disaster."
I saluted my obedience and left. What a name for a battle. Years later, the Nords hold it as one of their most glorious moments in the war. They call it the Battle of Driftshade Pass. The Legion calls it Admand's Disaster.
The rain lead the way northwest while Aela and I suffered in silence beneath it. North from Fort Greenwall, Skyrim steadily descended into a wasted morass of hot springs, geysers, and mud. Every several hours the wintery downpour relented; giving the thin grey sludge a chance to crawl up our legs as we trudged along.
One evening found us sheltered in a fisherman's shack next to one of the White River's countless tributaries. After great effort, we had a fire going by the door. Our clothes and packs made a soaking semi-circle around the blaze with Aela and I squeezed between our things, desperate to be warm for the first time in days.
"Do you think the soldiers were captured?" Aela asked. It was the most words she'd strung together toward me in weeks.
I shrugged uncertainly, tapping the red diamond on my right arm. "All I know is that something horrible happened."
A full week later, Aela and I were lying on our bellies in the damp snow. A few hundred feet below us, figures in legionary equipment milled about in the noontime sun. The wind roared about our ears. In the wake of the first storm of the winter, the north wind had picked up fiercely, bringing the deep cold of Atmora to her children. The gusts snatched at my hood and sent Aela's hair flying from beneath hers in coppery tangles.
After an hour gazing down on the figures below, I wriggled away from the ledge and into the cleft that sheltered our camp from the frigid wind.
"Those fucking idiots," I repeated to myself as I paced the narrow confines of our hideout.
"What's on your mind, Love?" Aela demanded quietly, wrapping her arms around me as much to hold me in place as calm me down.
"I'm wishing the cohort down there hadn't mutinied," I said.
Her eyes widened, "Mutiny? In the Legion? You're sure? The Legion doesn't mutiny!"
I broke out of her arms and shook my head to clear my head of the rapid thoughts that were coming to the surface of my mind, driving my peace of mind farther away.
"It's in the details down there: No officers in sight, fortifications neglected, guards talking to each other on the walls…" I sighed in helplessness, knowing what doing my duty would mean to the people down there, "…It's a circumstantial, but it's a mountain of circumstance. There's just too much down there that no disciplined unit would be allowed to get away with."
She shook her head in confusion, "The guilty ones will be executed. Surely that's just?"
I sighed, letting my hand glide up her arm. My mind drifted back years ago, listening to the old Tribune assigned to Kvatch to teach the men-at-arms how to work with the regular Legion. "The actions of a few reflect on everyone: If one group deserts, we're all deserters; if one officer can go rouge and murder a king, there's a chance we're all willing to go rogue and carve out a kingdom of our own. That's how the Legion's code of honor works," I explained.
Aela shook her head slightly, nonplussed by my worries, "So the stain on the honor of the guilty spreads on everyone. It might not be right, but it is natural. It happens in the Companions from time to time. Remember how we caused Kodlak's death?"
"And the lengths we had to go to atone for it. But the Legion uses decimation to punish mutiny."
Aela tensed, "They'll kill everybody down there?"
I shook my head, "A common misconception. Actual decimation is much worse. Once that cohort is subdued, and Tullius will stop his campaign to put them down, mutiny is that big a deal for the Legion; the soldiers will be made to draw straws. One in ten will draw a short straw. The other nine will be obliged to beat the loser to death. Actual guilt is immaterial."
Aela walked back over to me in the cold quiet and led me to the flap of our tent, "There's nothing you can do now Love. Just let it go for a while, we'll need to be away before dawn if you're right."
I turned my head to kiss my wife and tried to do as I was told.
I must have nodded off eventually, but I still felt tired and sick as the sky lightened above our shelter and we crept out.
"Let's get out of here Ieago. The sooner we report back, the sooner we can be done with this," Aela said as we turned onto the road to Kynesgrove.
General Tullius and Legate Rikke became deathly quiet when I relayed my news. The two of them departed for Fort Kastav with Aela and me in trail. Two cohorts assembled as we traveled and soon the four of us were at the head of a small column quick-marching northwest. I don't know how they did it, but nearly 1200 soldiers were marched along the roads south of Windhelm without a Stormcloak confronting us.
Three days later, the loyal cohorts were parked around the mutinous fort. Tullius and Rikke stood at the gate with Aela and me behind them. There would be a final opportunity to return to the Legion's authority. There was not one of us among the loyal soldiers and officers who wanted me to be right. "Let me be wrong," I prayed to whoever might be listening, "Let this be a mistake, that I dragged two cohorts deep into enemy territory out of incompetence."
But I wasn't wrong. The mutineers resisted fiercely and the fight lasted longer than it should have. In the end, a quarter of the 42nd Legion's 8th cohort was dead and the survivors made to draw straws.
Some of the soldiers openly wept; braver ones tried to volunteer; a couple ratted out the guilty among the survivors. Nothing availed them in the face of the Empire's inexorable discipline. We watched forty soldiers die by stoning, one after the other. Any of the nine in a lot caught holding back was singled out and made to deliver a blow separately. Tullius and Rikke stood with the other officers, to a man and woman shaking with rage. Aela stood silently, shocked at the brutality on display. I stood next to her, feeling my soul wither.
After what felt like an age the savagery came to an end, almost 150 needless deaths later. The ground was too hard with frost to dig a proper pyre, so the dead were placed in one of the ditches they dug downhill of their fort and covered with piles. The 8th's cohort eagle was recovered and placed among the dead. The rotten, sodden wood used to cover the bodies caught fire reluctantly after being soaked in lamp oil. The funeral pyre was a cold, inadequate blaze that left the air smelling of smoke and flesh for miles downwind. The smoke refused to climb more than head-height above the ground. The survivors of the 8th would be marched back to Solitude where they would be dispersed to other legions, under new names if they chose. The 8th cohort of the 42nd Highrock Legion ceased to exist and would never return.
Aela and I rendezvoused with the rest of the 9th at Kynesgrove with Tullius and Rikke. The innkeeper there caught our mood and kept the alcohol coming as Aela and I sat quietly at a table. "Ieago, I've seen you covered in the blood of the prey you've slain. At the Battle of Whiterun, I watched you hack a path to the man who insulted you and cut him apart. After Riften, you saw looters nailed to the crosses without even blinking. You've seen your share of death. Why is this weighing on you so?" Aela asked, rubbing my back while I stared woodenly into the mead the publican kept placing in front of me.
I reached over and put my hand on hers. "Those bandits I kill for the Companions, they're people who chose to live by the sword like we do. They have to know going in that it's likely that they will die by the sword too. When I kill them, I don't feel a god damn thing. When I kill Thalmor, I'm able to say to myself, 'these people are the killers of my friends and enemies of my Empire: It is my duty to slay them.' Killing the Stormcloaks does cause remorse: They are my countrymen, fighting for a cause they know in their hearts is right. The saving grace is that they had the chance to challenge me and the rest of the loyalists to bring about their hopes. I hope they can think of me and the Legion the same way." I took another long pull from the tankard in front of me.
"But you think those legionnaires we just saw killed never had a chance?"
I nodded, "Half of them were teenagers. They joined looking for adventure or out of a sense of civic virtue. All they wanted was to see something of the other provinces and have a few septims saved to start a family once their terms tours were up," I took a hard pull from the bottle of crisp, dry mead in my hand, "Only to wind up in a frigid ruin of a castle, their friends dead, and lost in a country where they're hated for an oath they took in good faith. They wanted to be safe, they wanted to be free, and I killed them for it," I hung my head, feeling that tension of restrained tears building in my chest.
Aela sighed and frowned in frustration, "Ieago, that's not true and you know it. They broke the same oath that you made to Tullius. They didn't have to turn their backs on the Legion. Tullius and Rikke gave them a final chance and they blew it."
"I know you're right, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it," I replied to the table in front of me.
Aela gave and exasperated sigh and stood up, "Look, you can't be responsible for their bad choices and you can't change what happened. I'm going upstairs. Come to bed when you're done feeling sorry for yourself."
I dismissed the publican and sat in the dark for a while, slowly finishing my last drink and digesting Aela's words before going to bed. What a shitty few months: A house burned down; banished from a hold by a traitor; getting tortured by the Thalmor; humiliating a colleague before his men; discovering an old friend among the ranks of my Jarl's enemy. What else would go wrong this year? I wondered. I slid under the blankets and Aela rolled over to put her head on my pillow, "Self-pity does not become you Love," she said. I pulled her closer and kissed her nose before dropping off. At least Aela was speaking to me again.
Yep. I'm vain enough to write a whole chapter on a pet peeve of mine: "Decimate" is not a synonym for "annihilate." I still hope you enjoyed it. The other reason was to give Tullius a chance to be a real character for a minute.