Turdas, 18th of Hearthfire, 4E 201
The next time Kjell was aware of himself, he was sprawled out on the snowy ground in his underclothes. His thoughts from immediately before were shrouded by an intense fog. He squeezed his eyes shut and slowly sat up. His body felt sore, and he felt as though he should know why...
"I was starting to think you might never come back," Aela's voice said, snapping Kjell out of his own head.
"What just happened?" Kjell rasped. His throat was terribly dry.
"You were born into the pack, brother," Aela said with a note of pride in her voice. "I almost envy you. That first time is always the most... intense."
"I don't remember... anything," Kjell said, trying again to think back. Even the events leading up to his transformation were a blur.
"You gave us even more trouble than Farkas did at his first turning," Aela said, barking a laugh. "You ran amok through the streets."
"Did I... hurt anyone?" Kjell asked The lack of any recollection was becoming more worrisome by the second.
"No," Aela said. "Although you did overturn a stall in the marketplace."
"And the guards? Or anyone else who might have seen? Did they know..?" Kjell pressed.
"No," Aela replied with certainty. "As far as any of them know, Skjor was chasing after an attacking werewolf, not corralling a fellow Companion. The town will be abuzz for a few days, I'm sure, but not about us."
"What about you?" Kjell asked. "You were also... you know, one of those."
"I had the good sense to exit the Underforge the back way," Aela said. "You should too, next time," she added with a smirk.
They lapsed into silence for a moment. Kjell was still reeling, hardly able to believe what all had just transpired. Aela tossed his knapsack at him, almost as if it were an afterthought.
"Get dressed," she said. "We have a celebration planned for you."
"Oh?" Kjell asked. He opened the knapsack and found that it contained a set of clothes, along with some armor pieces. Not a full set of armor, but enough to get him by in a pinch.
"The Silver Hand have taken over the old fort at Gallows Rock," Aela said. "I think you've met them before."
"How could I forget," Kjell said flatly, remembering how they had ambushed Farkas and him in Dustman's Cairn. Kjell had truly feared for his life that day – not that he'd tell Aela. In any case, the Silver Hand had definitely left a bad taste in his mouth, werewolf or not.
"We're going to slaughter them," Aela added with a smile. "Skjor's already scouting ahead."
Kjell got dressed and found that in stead of his own dagger, there was a new one in the bottom of his knapsack. There were also ten throwing knives.
"Skyforge steel," Aela noted. "Superior quality. Let's move."
"Lead the way," Kjell said.
. . .
The two hiked over to the fort in companionable silence. When they arrived outside the building, there didn't appear to be anybody keeping watch. As they approached the door more closely, they saw three dead bodies sprawled out on the ground.
"Skjor," Aela whispered, flashing Kjell a grin. "They always make such easy prey."
The first sight that met Kjell and Aela when they entered the inside of the fort was two werewolves' heads on spikes, standing at either side of a doorway. The way further in was blocked by a thick metal grate.
"Look at this," Aela scoffed. "Cowards must have locked the place down after Skjor charged in. You can taste the fear."
"Easy enough, though," Kjell said, pulling a chain on the adjacent wall.
The chain was a switch that lowered the grate spanning the doorway. What was even the point of that grate, Kjell wondered, if you can just open it with a chain on the wall? Regardless, though, it allowed them to proceed into the fort and down a flight of stairs. Turning a corner, Kjell readied a throwing knife – and, surely enough, he and Aela managed to get the drop on a couple of Silver Hand sitting around a fire in the next room. Kjell hurled his knife hard, hitting one in the back of the neck and dropping her. The other, in confusion, moved toward them in the shadows to investigate, only to be cut down by Aela's dagger. Neither had even screamed or cried out.
Kjell and Aela checked around the room to make sure no one else was there, and Kjell swiped a few Septims and a potion that he found on a table. He worked his way around the room to an open closet, where he stopped short. What the..? Lying in a bloody pile on the floor was an enormous beast that, after a moment, Kjell recognized as a werewolf. Divines, that isn't..? Is it..?
"There's a dead one, isn't there?" Aela's voice cut through Kjell's thoughts as she came to stand beside him. "Thought so. Nobody we know, by the smell."
Kjell let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. It wasn't Skjor. Although the sight still didn't sit well with him, and he found it hard to just turn away and leave. This was still someone... right?
"Some can't separate the animal from themselves. Go feral. This poor sod... could have been anyone," Aela said. Her tone was gentler, as she seemed to sense Kjell's discomfort. "We should keep moving.
Aela placed a firm hand on Kjell's upper arm and steered him away from the dead werewolf in the closet. There were two other doors in the room they had just cleared – one on the south wall and one on the west wall. They moved to clear the west door first, but it wouldn't open.
"Weird," Kjell muttered. "It's... stuck on something?"
"Let me try," Aela said, moving past Kjell to push on the door. "Feels like it's barred. But no matter. We'll get to them eventually, one way or another."
The door to the south led the way to a damp hallway. There were several types of fungi growing on the stone walls and floors. At the end of the corridor, they were startled by an enormous skeever, which Kjell – first in the marching order – quickly cut down.
"Ugh," he said, unable to stifle a shudder. Even after spending his youth in the Ratway back in Riften, he wasn't used to being in close quarters with skeevers and he didn't want to be.
"No surprise they keep vermin around. Filthy squalor," Aela said disdainfully.
Beyond the skeever, the end of the corridor led to a set of stairs, this time going up. Good, Kjell thought, maybe the upstairs won't have any more skeevers. There were some more Silver Hand in the next room, and Aela got a gleam in her eye, realizing that she and Kjell hadn't been noticed. She was about to move in to ambush, when something caught Kjell's eye – a pressure plate on the floor. Some kind of trap! Aela was already out of reach for him to stop her, and he couldn't call out without alerting however many enemies were in the room ahead. He gestured frantically, as broadly as he dared to, trying to get Aela's attention – but she just wasn't facing him.
"Aela," Kjell whispered, his breath bearing pushing out her name. She didn't hear. "Pssss!" he hissed.
The next few things happened all at once. Aela's head whirled around to face him. One of the Silver Hand also snapped their head in Kjell's direction, and a second rose from his seat. Shit, Kjell thought. Suddenly, four Silver Hand were charging in their direction.
Aela backed up and drew her bow, slowly backing down the stairs as she readied to shoot. Two of the Silver Hand, also archers, hung back while the other two approached. One carried a short sword and the other carried a great sword. The one with the short sword was faster and went for Kjell, the closer of his targets.
When the Silver Hand readied to take a swing, Kjell moved in close. Her blade swung far out past him, leaving her to awkwardly tap him with her cross guard. It'd leave a bruise, but Kjell found that preferable to a slice. With his off hand, Kjell grabbed onto her to keep her close as he drove his dagger into her side and twisted. She even took an arrow for him as he held her up in front of his own body, while the two archers tried in vain to hit him.
"Thanks," he muttered with a grim smirk.
Meanwhile, the man with the great sword had headed down the stairs to Aela. She fired several shots at him, but couldn't manage to get her arrows in between his heavy armor; they bounced off of him and onto the floor. Gradually he made it far enough down the stairs to look sinisterly over Aela, raising his sword overhead. But the blow he had been preparing to deliver never came. He stopped short, screwed his face up, and shuddered heavily. His sword clattered to the ground, and Aela looked up to see Kjell's hand twisting a dagger into the lumbering foe's side.
"Thanks," Aela said.
"Don't thank me until we figure out what to do about those archers," Kjell said,
Although a few arrows had flown their way at first, the air was now still. The archers almost certainly stood at the ready, prepared to loose arrows at them the moment they emerged from the stairs. Kjell and Aela, moving as quietly as they could, ascended the stairs sticking tightly to the right hand side. Immediately at the top, they ducked and took cover behind a table, set up adjacent to a thick stone wall that split the room, full of jail cells, all the way down the middle until it opened up at the other end. They waited under cover, but no arrows came their way. Aela readied an arrow and moved silently down the empty right side of the dividing wall, as Kjell prepared his dagger.
When Aela was positioned, Kjell grabbed a book off the table and lobbed it off to the left side of the wall, where the archers were. Confused, the two archers moved carefully toward Kjell's end, focusing as they expected a fight to come from that direction. Aela silently emerged into the left side of the room from the opposite end and shot one of them down. The other, panicking, ran to Kjell's end and rounded the corner – right into Kjell's blade. And he had to admit, the look on the archer's face was hilarious.
At the other end of the room there were more stairs leading back down. From the top, Kjell and Aela could see several more werewolves' heads on spikes. They proceeded down cautiously, but there was nothing there but a closed door. Inside the next room were four more Silver Hand, who were quickly dispatched. Kjell was able to walk right up to the first one, sitting down, and slit his throat from behind. He never even saw it coming. They didn't call me 'Lightfoot' back in Riften for nothing, Kjell thought with satisfaction, recalling his days with the Thieves Guild. The rest of the Silver Hand in this room were on an upper floor that looked over the bottom, but Kjell and Aela had no trouble moving stealthily about the room and positioning themselves effectively to take them out.
"We're getting close now," Aela said quietly as they moved up the stairs and proceeded further into the fort. "Be careful. Their leader is a tricky one. They call him 'the Skinner'. I don't think I need to tell you why."
Aela gave Kjell a pointed glance. He shuddered a little at the thought, but steeled himself to carry on, taking the lead.
Aela was right. The next large room they came to indeed housed 'the Skinner', and he seemed to have been expecting them. Kjell had approached and opened the door in near total silence – and yet, no sooner did the door open than the Skinner came charging out of the room with a massive war hammer, ready to strike. He might've cracked the skull of a slower man right then and there, but Kjell managed to back up and dodge around a corner.
The corridor where Kjell had managed to dodge opened into a small square area around a weight bearing pillar. Kjell nervously kited the Skinner around the pillar, taking swipes and stabs when he dared. More importantly, his keeping the Skinner's attention allowed Aela to come up from behind. She jabbed a dagger into the Skinner's neck and he slowed, a shocked look coming over his face as blood poured out of him. But he didn't drop his weapon. To the contrary, he lifted it, as if readying a final swing – as if he were determined with his dying act to see Kjell out of this world. But before he could finish the swing, all the blood he was losing caught up with him. His fingers would no longer maintain their grip. The war hammer fell from his hands, hitting the floor with a loud clang. The Skinner tried to take a shaky step forward, before collapsing face down at Kjell's feet.
Kjell and Aela exchanged a relieved glance before she passed him and proceeded into the room. Kjell took the opportunity to quickly check the Skinner's body for valuables, and he wasn't disappointed. There was a fairly hefty coin purse on the Skinner's person, but Kjell didn't get a chance to count it out on the spot. Instead, he was interrupted by a howling, almost inhuman scream of anguish. Thinking Aela was in trouble, Kjell bolted into the room ahead only to find her standing alone, her shoulders shaking.
"What's..?" Kjell started to ask, but stopped suddenly as he approached where Aela stood and saw for himself – at her feet lay the body of Skjor. He was dead.
"The bastards," Aela spat out, wiping tears from her eyes only for more to immediately wet them again. "Somehow they managed to kill Skjor. He was one of the strongest we had!"
"Yes," Kjell began carefully, "but... numbers can overwhelm..." He had no idea what to say to ease Aela's pain; he knew that she and Skjor had shared a special bond over their shared eagerness in embracing the wolf blood.
"He should not have come without a Shield-Sibling," Aela said through gritted teeth, trying hard to bite back her emotion.
"What can I do?" Kjell asked gently. He agreed, but he didn't think saying so would help right now.
"Nothing," she said bitterly. Her anger was starting to flare up even as tears of sorrow still filled her eyes. "Get out of here. I'm going to make sure we got the last of them, and see if there's any information to be gotten from the bodies."
"Are you sure you're okay on your own?" Kjell asked hesitantly.
"Yes," Aela answered firmly. "Go back to Jorrvaskr and rest up. You and I have work to do. The Silver Hand will tremble at our sight."