31
We were maybe half a mile away from Raven Rock when we found the body. I heard Gaea cry out, and then suddenly the Legion soldiers all began running, and I had to hurry to keep up with them. Out in a shallow clearing, a man wearing Legion armor lay face down in the snow, two wooden arrow shafts jutting from his back. His body was frozen solid; he had been there since the night before.
"Oh no," Gaea said despairingly. The body of their comrade had stunned the Legion soldiers speechless. "Come on," she said, "We have to get moving. We might not be too late."
"But, ma'am" one of the guards said hesitantly, looking down at the body. "We can't just leave him here, we have to bury him."
"No time," Gaea said, shaking her head. "We'll come back for him later, we have to get to Raven Rock right now!"
By the way his body was sprawled in the snow, it looked to me like he had been running when he'd been killed, but I didn't say this out loud. If he was running, it probably meant he was being chased. And if that was the case, then I had a feeling we were already far too late to help anyone in Raven Rock.
We ran onward, slogging our way through the snow until we reached an opening in the tree line up on a hill overlooking the area where Raven Rock lay. Fading columns of wispy smoke drifted up into the sky, and we hurried down into the clearing below.
The mining camp was nothing but ruins. The ramshackle buildings and flimsy barracks that circled the compound were all burned to the ground, with nothing left but charred timbers sticking up out of the ground like grave markers. Smoke drifted up from some of the wreckage, which still smoldered and hissed. The snow was smeared with ash and debris, and blood. Corpses were lying all over, sprawled and scattered like discarded dolls, cut down mercilessly. The miners of the camp, unarmed and defenseless, all dead.
The only thing that remained standing was the mining office built into the entrance of the mine, and it was in poor shape. The wooden ramp into the mine and the structure around it was destroyed, and the outside of the office building itself was charred, the windows broken, but it was still standing. The fire had somehow charred the outside but had stopped there.
Gaea stumbled into the center of the camp, looking around in shock. The other soldiers just seemed lost, stunned to see such devastation. No one spoke, as there was nothing to say. We surveyed the destruction, trying to understand. I walked over to one of the bodies and knelt down beside it. I had never met a Bosmer elf before, but I could tell that this miner had been Bosmer. So far from home, dead in the snow.
Dannus took off his helmet and looked around the compound. "What are we supposed to do now? I don't believe this."
"We have to look for survivors," Gaea said, determined. "And then we have to let Captain Cavorian know what happened here."
"Survivors? How could there be any ..." Dannus said, shaking his head.
One of the other guards caught motion in the trees on the other side of the compound and shouted suddenly, pointing his sword. "Look!" he shouted.
"Over here!" a figure cried out as he emerged from the tree line, waving his arms. We all immediately ran over to him to find he was a Legion soldier, although he wasn't wearing his armor. Gaea tried to question him but he just waved her off and frantically told us to come with him.
Deeper into the forest, we found the survivors. There were six of them from the mining camp, four miners and two officer workers, and one other Legion soldier who was badly injured. Seven wounded, plus the Legion soldier talking to Gaea, and another man sitting near the wounded, giving some help to one of them. They were all huddled around a campfire in the middle of a grove of fir trees and were stunned to see us arrive.
"They attacked just as we arrived," the Legion soldier explained. "It was the barbarians, like they said. They all wore wolf skins, and there must have been fifty of them. We didn't stand a chance, they came from all sides."
"The Captain said he sent six men here," Gaea said.
"We sent Kalius to run back to the fort, did he ..."
"I'm sorry," Gaea said. "We found his body in the woods."
"Then that means me and Lannis are the only ones who made it out," the soldier said painfully, looking down at his wounded comrade. "And Lannis might not make it."
Gaea was focused on the soldier, and her men were trying to decide what they could do to help. But my attention was elsewhere. I walked around the soldiers and approached the campfire, staring at the man giving assistance to the wounded. He glanced up at me and gave a short nod.
It was Reinhardt Red-Spear.