Mortality

"You are holding your sword wrong," Mauronk admonished. "Grip it like this, with a looser wrist. Such stiffness will allow a foe to disarm you easily." He shook my sword arm to loosen it.

We had camped halfway up the mountain toward the Barrow. Night had fallen, and that big red moon was hovering behind the peak, looking so close you could touch it. Except that I was busy being humiliated as Mauronk struggled with perhaps the worst student in history. Frustration building, I adjusted my grip and resumed the stance the Orsimer taught me.

"Now, come for me," he commanded, and I attacked. He easily blocked my first strike and pulled up short before the tip of his blade could slide into my throat. "Were you not taught the sword at your father's knee?"

I righted myself and scowled at him. "No," I said through gritted teeth. "I'm one of the weird ones whose parents didn't go for that sort of thing."

"I have not known a single Nord who wasn't trained in the basics, at least," he snorted. Suddenly, he swung his sword in a downward arc toward me. Instinctively, I raised my sword to block the blow, barely managing it with my skinny arms, and drove my elbow into his face.

He staggered back a step. Touching his lip, he found blood there. "Better."

I rubbed my arm where it hit his tusks. That smarted. "Must be nice having an arsenal in your mouth."

His brow twitched but he didn't say anything. Sighing, he conceded, "Perhaps the sword is not to your liking."

"The bow's good," I suggested. "Just keep me the hell away from the bad guys, and I'll be happy."

"Yes, it would be good if your aim were improved," he acknowledged with another poorly concealed grin. "I do not want... arrows up my ass."

"Hmm, I'd have to dig them out," I teased. "Not that you really put up too many obstacles to that sort of thing." Winking at his wide-eyed stared, I grinned. Good grief, he made it so easy. "Okay, so what's the trick, then? How do I aim this thing?"

He spent about an hour giving me a really thorough and intense lesson in bowmanship, which apparently involved a lot of touching. The angle of my shoulders needed adjustment, the set of my hips needed very careful tending, my feet had to be just so... I swear, anyone else, and I would have thought it was a well-orchestrated seduction. I was certainly feeling a little warmer than I should, even after a bit of exercise, by the time we packed it in for the night.

"I will take first watch," he offered, his voice deeper and rougher than normal. He wouldn't look at my face, either, and I wondered what terrible offense I'd committed besides being unforgivably lame. I was pretty sure that, to an Orc, lameness was not tolerated.

Unpacking my bedroll and blanket, I settled down, but sleep wasn't coming. I was never much of a camper back home. Every little sound nearly sent me into the bushes. Every time I saw his silhouette beyond the low-burning campfire, walking around the perimeter of our camp, I almost screamed. The adventurer's life sounded so cool when I was sitting on the other side of the screen. On this side, it was cold, the ground was hard, there was a root under my back that I couldn't avoid no matter where I moved... I didn't even have the comparative luxury of a chamberpot out here, for crying out loud.

And I was going to have to really kill people. A lot of people, very likely. The agonized screams of those two burning Imperials came to mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I even covered my ears, as if that would help. I hope they don't haunt me, I thought desperately. Nobody better summon their ghosts or whatever it is they do around here.

Thinking about dead things made me remember that there would be some undead in the Barrow. Crap. How many more completely foreign, alien things was I going to have to put up with this week?

Before I knew it, Mauronk was coming over. "Your turn," he said wearily. Had it been four hours already? Struggling up, I stamped my feet and rubbed my arms to get the circulation going again.

"So... you know if I see anything dangerous, I'm coming to get you, right?"

"I assumed you would," he replied as he unbuckled his steel breastplate. It was almost a disappointment that he didn't go farther than that; he kept his greaves and everything else on. Oh well. I hastily left, so he wouldn't think I was standing around waiting for him to take all his clothes off again.

As luck would have it, the rest of the night was uneventful. I kept walking around the camp, trying to ignore everything that didn't look like it was launching itself at me, like bunnies and foxes, and ignoring any sound that didn't have a growl in it. When the sun's light started peeking over the mountains to the east, I returned to camp.

I was a little startled by what I saw. Maybe I wasn't the brightest light in the room when it came to men, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize when a guy is touching himself in his sleep. I was pretty sure he was still asleep, at least. And it wasn't like he was going to town or anything. Just... rubbing. But if it went on much longer, I had a feeling things would escalate.

Carefully backpedaling out of camp, I took a deep breath and shouted, "I swear to god, if I get brambles in my ass, someone's gonna pay!" From where I was hiding, I could just see him jerk awake and hastily sort himself out. Relieved, I threw on an indignant, spoiled-brat-who's-just-had-to-pee-outside face, and stormed into camp.

"I miss that chamberpot," I groused without looking at him. Honestly, I was still too embarrassed. What if I blushed? I didn't want him to know I caught him with his hand down his pants, for heaven's sake.

As we trudged up the mountain path, which unlike the game was more of an animal trail than a well-worn road, I found myself watching his body move. Yeah, I'd seen him thoroughly naked several times before, but never aroused. It was easy to laugh about his antics when I wasn't also thinking about him in a sexual way. Which I was now. A lot. Not that I hadn't before, it was just... different. Like flirting with a guy you know you haven't got a chance with, and all of a sudden he kisses you... You didn't think there would be any consequences or commitments because maybe you thought you weren't his type or he was gay or something, but then... it stopped being safe. Not like I was afraid he would jump all over me, but now it was like finding out the guy you've got the hots for isn't gay, and maybe you'd better settle down with the whole flirtation or he might get the wrong idea... except maybe that's exactly the idea you want him to get...

Damn. I felt like my head was going to explode.

My brain continued trying to figure out what the hell it was thinking and how to deal with this new-ish view of Mauronk when he suddenly stopped and stuck an arm out, clobbering me across the chest in a ham-fisted effort to urge me into hiding. I nearly fell back down the mountain.

"Bandits," he hissed. "Bow."

I froze for a minute, then fumbled my hunting bow out. The first arrow I pulled out fell right out of my hands and skittered away back down the path. Without thinking, I almost broke cover to get it, but Mauronk grabbed the front of my armor and shoved me roughly back against the rocks we were hiding behind.

"Stay down!" he snarled.

Swallowing hard, I peeked around his shoulder. There it was. Not the Barrow, but some ruined, abandoned tower built into the mountainside on the way up to the Barrow. If I remembered right, there were usually only three bandits in it. Should be a piece of cake. A piece of very dry cake that someone forgot to put sugar in.

"There," he said in an undertone, pointing. I followed his finger, and saw a bandit standing obliviously at one end of the little bridge leading to the foot of the tower. He was completely out in the open, easy to see even though it was starting to snow, and not too tremendously far away. Easy shot. I nearly barfed.

"You can do this, Danni," Mauronk whispered. "They will kill us if we do not kill them first."

"We don't do this shit where I come from!" I bit back under my breath. But I knew better than to sit there and argue with him at this point. Nocking a fresh arrow, I scooted out into the open where I could get a clear shot, aimed as he had shown me, and let it go.

Beginner's luck is highly overrated. The arrow missed him by at least two yards. I could blame it on the wind, but dead people don't listen to excuses after the fact. The bandit pulled out a warhammer the size of my cousin's nine-year-old and charged. Another appeared out of nowhere and started shooting at us. She wasn't nearly as stupid as the Imperials in Helgen, and her first arrow grazed my shoulder.

Gasping with shocked pain, I faltered. Mauronk leaped out of hiding and engaged the first Nord with a roar. Staggering backward out of the immediate area of their fight, I shakily nocked another arrow, but was interrupted by the bandit's next shot going into my hip.

The sickening image of Boromir getting pincushioned in Lord of the Rings came to mind, and I almost lost it. I jumped behind the rocks again and took some steadying breaths. Mauronk would really be pissed at me if I let him die. Getting another arrow loaded, I staggered out again, and fired.

Luckily, because skill likely had nothing to do with it, the bandit woman was right in my sights, and my arrow went straight into her head.

It wasn't easy dealing with relief, triumph, and the urge to violently spew all at once. The pain in my hip was becoming so distracting, I wasn't sure I could help Mauronk at all, but I did my best. I shot the bandit in the side, mostly because he was only a couple yards away, so he was about as big as a barn from that distance. Just as Mauronk's sword cleaved through the bandit in a messy display of bones, muscle, and excessive amounts of blood on the snow, another figure barreled out of the tower.

In the heat of battle, I hadn't really registered the other bandits' races. They were human, that was about all I could be sure of. This one was an Orc. A really big Orc. Granted, Mauronk was big too, but he wasn't charging at me with an axe.

The fight with the Nord must have taken a bit out of him because he didn't intercept the bandit right away. Shaking like a leaf, I nocked an arrow and shot, somehow managing to hit the Orc in the shoulder. He bellowed, but kept on coming. I started backing up, limping on my bum leg, dropping every other arrow I tried to fire, and he just wouldn't stop.

Apparently, when your death is coming, you get tunnelvision. I couldn't see anything but the Orc closing in. The axe came up, and I had to drop my bow and pull the sword I totally sucked at wielding. He swept the blade around, aiming for my head, just as my unsteady foot slid on an icy rock and dropped me on my ass. His axe clanged loudly into the rocks beside me, and he pulled back to give it another go. I couldn't do anything but cringe and hold my sword up, not even hoping it would block him at that point, because I knew it wouldn't.

He had yellow eyes. Big, angry yellow eyes I would see forever or for another half second, whichever came first.

Out of nowhere, a large object hurtled at my attacker and rammed him so hard into the rocks he dropped his axe. There was a flash of steel, the sickening sound of flesh being pierced, a gurgle, then the Orc fell face down.

A vicious adrenaline crash assailed me, and I began to shake. I couldn't move, couldn't think. The Orc bandit's face was turned toward me, and his eyes were still open. The game always discreetly closed their eyes for you, so you wouldn't freak out. I felt like he was promising me that he'd see me again, and this time Mauronk wouldn't be around to save me.

"Come," a deep voice said. I could barely hear him, there was so much noise. The wind was roaring in my ears, and there was still so much screaming. Were there other bandits? Did they have prisoners they were torturing? "Calm down, Danni, he is dead."

When my throat began to hurt, I realized everything else was quiet, the bandits dead. The screaming even quieted down, to be replaced by crying. By that point, I'd figured out that the noisemaker was me.

"You are wounded," he pointed out, still trying to get me to move. I couldn't stop shaking. My whole body was nearly convulsing. Taking my arm, he dragged me to my feet, then slung me carefully over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.

My eyes were so blinded by tears I didn't see where he took me until the wind had died down and there wasn't as much snow blowing on us. We were inside the tower. He settled me down against the back wall by the stairs, then dug his blanket out of his pack.

I had deliberately not looked at my hip the whole time, but now I took a peek. At some point, the fletched end had broken off, so it was just a piece of wood sticking out of me. But there was a huge blood stain on the armor skirting, and lots of it running down my leg as well. I'd completely forgotten about the arrow that cut my shoulder, and now that wound started to sting like a bastard.

Mauronk worked fast, unbuckling my armor under the blanket so I wouldn't be too cold. When he got to the arrow, he paused.

"I'm going to pull it out. It will hurt," he warned apologetically. I just nodded. I couldn't speak, my jaw was clenched so tightly. Placing his palm over my hip and grabbing the shaft, he seemed to be counting to himself, then he yanked hard.

It was pretty fortunate we'd killed all the bandits at the tower, because the scream of pain that came out of me would have brought the rest of them down if any missed the fight.

He kept at it, and soon had my leather removed. I lay there shivering in my woolen underthings in spite of the blanket. I was pretty sure I was going into shock, but I could feel his hand on my hip, gently resting over the injury. He closed his eyes and his lips began to move.

A warmth spread through my body, starting at my hip, and I realized that the game left out a big chunk of what magic was all about here. I got the sense that he was speaking words to whatever healing spell he was using, but I didn't understand them. He seemed almost lost in the moment, too. And I could feel other things as well.

Maybe it was because of his proximity to my pleasure center, but I could feel some definite rippling sensations through my pelvic area. I didn't think the designers included an orgasm spell, but I was starting to wonder as my breathing quickened and my face flushed. All I needed now was a good, throaty moan and an involuntary parting of the thighs to really freak the poor man out.

Too soon, Mauronk cut off the delicious healing and opened his eyes to check on me. The unexpectedly arousing feelings only lingered for a few seconds as memory of how close I came to dying roared back into the forefront. The shaking started again.

"I will build a fire, there in the doorway," he said. "It should help."

What would have helped immeasurably was a hug. But I hadn't been able to get my jaw working yet, so how was I supposed to tell the least considerate Orc on the planet that I needed living things around me right now? Someone that wasn't about to kill me, for a change.

The Orc bandit kept coming at me every time I closed my eyes. I hugged myself, since Mauronk was too far away and preoccupied with laying a fire. When he finished with that, he set out our bedrolls, putting mine a bit farther away from his than I wanted right now.

"Mauronk," I managed to growl out through clenched teeth, "next to yours. Please."

He paused and looked at me. Maybe he wasn't as unfeeling as I thought, because he just nodded briefly and did as I asked. He took out my blanket and put it over me as well. Then he helped me get up and move onto my bedroll.

I dared a peek at my shoulder, and saw that while there was blood there, the ugly wound was sealed up. I'd have a scar, but it was closed. I had to assume the blood was still on my leg, because I was damned if I was ready to look just yet.

Finally, he finished fussing around and started stripping off his armor. I really hoped he'd go all the way, because I wanted to be in his arms right now, and I didn't fancy having cold steel between us. But when he knelt on his pallet, he was still in his greaves and boots.

I was sitting up facing the fire, the blankets wrapped tightly around me. Glancing over my shoulder, I said quietly, "The rest, please."

"What?"

"Take off... the rest."

I actually heard his swallow. "I... wear nothing beneath."

"I know."

"Are you... What are you asking of me, Danni?" he said awkwardly.

"Not... sex," I said. "I could have died. I just want... Hold me tonight. That's all. Just... hold me."

He let out his breath. "As you wish." I squeezed my eyes shut, listening to him unbuckle and discard the rest of his armor. He could have died, too. He had the world's worst ranged fighter backing him up, and I almost let him down.

Keeping my eyes on his face, I turned toward him and opened the blanket, so we could share it. He lay on his side, and gathered me into his arms. I pulled the blanket down over his naked backside for him.

"I know this is weird, and I'm really sorry for making you put up with it," I said.

"It is all right," he replied tightly. He wasn't looking at me, and his hand was on my back up near the shoulder blades as if he didn't want to get too familiar. My woolens were relatively thick; I'd made damn sure of that when I picked them out. Yet I could still feel him stiffening against me. "Forgive me," he breathed, his teeth clenched.

"It means you're not dead," I whispered, snuggling closer. "That's all I want to know."