Chapter 73: Alduin again

[29th – 30th of Evening Star 4E 201]

After Christmas/Saturalia we, that is Janina, Fiona and I with our housecarls, had decided to help Saadia against the Alik'r assassins who apparently tried to get hold of her and drag her back to High Rock. We had paid a visit to Dustman's Cairn first, where the Dragonborn learned the first word for the fire shout, allowed the Headless Huntsman to guide us to Hamvir's Rest, where we found a few strange books after defeating the skeletons and draugr, and finally turned west towards Swindler's Den, where we expected Kematu and his cronies to hide.

Fiona, Janina and I looked at my map and tried to find out which way to go. Lydia and Antonius, who were both from this hold, also had a look, and we saw that we could either stay on the north side of the small river and cross further west or go south first and keep along the northern flank of the lone mountain. Antonius suggested:

"Folks, I have been in this area before, and there are a couple of places along the river which are favored by bandits, on the north bank as far as I know. While I don't mind that in general, as our group is certainly larger and good enough to defeat them, maybe we can do that one our way back, if we want, and keep closer to the mountain. There are a few places to spend the night under some overhangs, too, and we should be able to get there before dusk."

Lydia nodded and nobody objected, so that we had a plan and an objective for the day. We walked south on the road for some time first, and then we left the road and head cross-country in southwestern direction. Antonius and Lydia led us, and close to the river's origin we walked into a small herd of deer and elk. We could use a large piece of meat for the evening, and thus I made a hand signal for my two saber cats to go hunting. I dropped all of my weapons except for a dagger, removed my armor and went with them. Antonius had seen that before, but most of the others had not, and I was sure that they were surprised, amused, or concerned, or maybe all of that together. Hanni and Nanni looked at me, and I checked the ground first. There were many small and medium sized rocks to hide behind, and we managed to coordinate our attack, approaching the small herd from three different directions. My two cats knew by now that I preferred a young deer to an old elk, and they managed to separate such an animal from the herd. Hanni continued to drive the poor deer right in my direction, while Nanni chased the other animals off. I was hiding behind a rock, and when the deer was close enough, I jumped forward. The poor animal's reaction time was not good enough, and I had my teeth around its throat before it fully realized what happened; my claws prevented the deer from doing anything about it, and the throat was cut within seconds.

When I looked up again, Hanni and Nanni had approached, and I petted them both and told them that they had done a great job. My snout was probably still bloody, and I got some odd looks from my companions. I really did not know how that worked out, but that wonderful Khajiit body of mine apparently had some instinctive reactions of its own, and that was that. I was not ashamed of my behavior, specifically as I did not hunt and kill animals for fun, but only when my companions and I needed to eat or I could provide food for others, like selling my prey to Anoriath or Hulda in Whiterun; otherwise Kynareth might become angry with me.

My own knowledge and expertise on skinning and cutting a wild animal expertly was very limited, though, and I was glad that Jordis and Lydia took over that task while I cleaned my face and body in the small creek nearby and donned my armor again. We separated some large pieces of meat for the two saber cats, and they started to indulge right away. The best pieces were wrapped for carrying, and I was already looking forward to dinner.

As we had planned, we stayed south of the small river from here on, and when we saw a bandit camp in the distance on the north bank, with a few tents and fishing nets, we headed more towards the mountain and soon found ourselves walking at the flank, with steep dark rocks to our left. Far to the north we could see a large rock behind the upper part of a small creek on the other side, and Antoninus explained:

"This large rock over there has a shallow cave under it, and it is called 'Greenspring Hollow'. There are always various animals around it, and together with the gold ore vein on the river bank, this is one of the reasons bandit groups like have a camp close by frequently. Hunters go there from time to time for a challenge, and the bandits can easily claim a hunter's possessions and their prey afterwards."

In mid afternoon we reached a nice place with an overhang which seemed to quite suitable for staying the night, and we needed a couple of extra hours anyway to roast our meat. While Lydia and Antonius started the fire, the rest of us explore the neighborhood, and not far from the camp we saw a big round structure with an indentation in the center. This kind of reminded me of a dragon mound, and before I could mention something, Fiona spoke:

"You know, that reminds me of the dragon I killed close to Kynesgrove. The big black one, Alduin, came and kind of resurrected the dragon in the mound. Are we going to see the same here, too?"

None of us knew, of course, but I would not be surprised if a dragon was actually going to show up here. The presence of the Dragonborn herself was likely to increase the likelihood of something happening, wasn't it?

Once we had explored the neighborhood and collected some more firewood, we got back to the camp, and after one hour or we could enjoy a superb meal. The venison had been nicely roasted over the open fire, and a pot hanging from an improvised tripod had stew with potatoes, leeks, cabbages, and carrots; that should do.

Due to the proximity of the dragon mound and potential bandit camps we again decided to have a watch during the night, and once again our four housecarls volunteered to share this duty, as usual. In the morning, I awoke before the others, and Lydia had the last watch again. Hanni and Nanni had slept next to me, but they were awake as soon as I stood up. At this time of the year, the morning sky was still entirely dark, and not even a trace of dawn was on the horizon yet. I stepped next to the Nord lady who had kept the fire going and asked if anything had happened, but she shook her head:

"No, it's totally quiet. There were a few noises from animals, but all small ones as much as I can tell. There was some rain in the first half of the night, as Jordis told me. Unless somebody is good enough to sneak up on us, we should be fine. And if somebody was close, your saber cat cubs would have smelled or sensed it, I guess."

"True, Lydia, thank you."

I told her that I'd step aside to empty my bladder, and I got down a ridge, closer to the dragon mound. Masser was in the sky and spread some illumination, and I could see the first traces of morning fog rising from the wet grass and bushes. The setting reminded me of an old German song, and I had heard it so frequently that I still knew it by heart:

Der Mond ist aufgegangen
Die goldnen Sternlein prangen
Am Himmel hell und klar:
Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget,
Und aus den Wiesen steiget
Der weiße Nebel wunderbar.

{The moon has been arising,
the stars in golden guising
adorn the heavens bright.
The woods stand still in shadows,
and from the meads and meadows
lift whitish mists into the night.}

Of course the forest was kind of missing here, but otherwise it was close. By now there was some early light on the horizon, indicating a coming dawn, and while I just stood and admired the peaceful scenery, I heard something else, a noise from afar, and I listened carefully. The noise came closer, soon I recognized it as dragon wings beating the air. This one was, as I noticed quickly, not one of the small dragons we had fought before, but a massive beast, like the one in Helgen. Alduin? Could it be? He was supposed to resurrect other dragons from their mounds, and there was a dragon mound right ahead, so yes, it was a possibility. I retreated to the camp, and when the sound from the beating wings came even closer, we woke up everybody, right in time to see a very dark shape barely registering against the almost as dark sky. The dragon was illuminated by the light reflecting from Secunda for a moment, and we were in awe when we saw that.

Fiona whispered: "Alduin, yes."

The huge dragon came down lower to the ground and started to hover right above the mound, and we could hear him speaking some words in dragon tongue. Fiona explained in a subdued voice:

"I have seen something like that before. Close to Kynesgrove Alduin resurrected a dragon from such a mound, and he commanded it to kill Delphine and me. Let's assume that he does the same here and prepare for combat, please."

We grabbed our weapons, and I added:

"There's no sense in attacking Alduin directly; he is way too strong. Better wait until he's gone and go for the other one."

After a few minutes the ground of the dragon mound started to crumble, and a dragon skeleton appeared, which was slowly filled with muscles and more, until finally a new born dragon was there; it was much smaller than Alduin, but it was was a dragon. Alduin rose higher and shouted:

"Kill the mortals, my dov!"

The huge black dragon's head turned right towards us for a moment, and he growled:

"Let me make it a little easier for him. Don't think I haven't seen you all!"

Alduin shouted something, and a meteor shower started to rain down on us, similar to the one at Helgen. We had to be careful to avoid being hit, and thus we could not pay much attention to the two dragons themselves, which was likely what Alduin had intended. Only a little bit of light came from the horizon yet, and some light was added by Secunda, the smaller one of Nirn's moons. It was kind of eerie to see the resurrected dragon rising from the layer of fog on and around the dragon mound, with a vague a ghost like shape slowly changing into a skeleton and than a full dragon. We barely noticed that Alduin was leaving, for some reason not attacking us further but apparently leaving this task to the other dragon. This fact did not really allow us to relax, though, and we needed to jump to the side quickly when the newly resurrected dragon blasted frost clouds in our direction; we, except the Nords among us, of course.

Fiona seemed to be happy about seeing this, apparently aware of the likelihood that a dragon blowing frost might be more sensitive to fire, and she called out:

"So, you are a frost dragon? How do you like fire?"

Right away she tried her new 'YOL' shout against the dragon, and the youngling was bathed in flames. When the flames were gone, a significant number of the dragon scales looked black and singed, and the flame attack must have hurt. While this was not sufficient yet to get the young dragon down to the ground, it likely realized that we weren't easy prey and kept more distance now. Not enough for my crossbow, though, and I was able to make some of my bolts hit. A few times Antonius also made his arrows find their targets, at least when he manged to hit the wings, and once Fiona could shout again and did so; eventually the dragon crash landed right next to the mound it had come from. This provided the perfect opportunity for Rayya and Janina to rush forward and swing their scimitars; each of them cut into one of the wings, and for a few seconds the beast had obvious trouble deciding which direction to turn to, as it got attacked from almost all sides at once. Very quickly, though, the dragon turned sideways, so that all of a sudden Rayya faced the head and Janina the tail. Both Redguard ladies were swift and agile, but so was the young dragon, and it had a much better reach; head and tail moved, and both warrior ladies were thrown in different directions. I was tempted to look after them, but we'd have to kill the dragon first. Fortunately, the scimitars had done sufficient damage to the beast's wings, and it utterly failed to rise again, even though it tried to do so a few times. Lydia took over teasing the beast from up close, my Imperial housecarl and I pestered it with bolts and arrows, and soon Fiona shouted 'YOL' a thidd time. The creature's movements slowed down, and I now also summoned my familiar 'Spirit'; together with her two real sisters, she rushed forward, and three saber cats were now hanging around the dragon's neck. None of them were strong enough to get through the thick scales, but my cubs made the creature focus its attention on them; I decided that now was the time to act. With the beast being distracted sufficiently by the three saber cat cubs, Lydia's sword and my male housecarl՚s arrows, I ran forward, jumped onto the dragon's neck next to my cubs, got my big axe out and swung it into the neck from above with all of the strength I could muster, holding on to the handle. The enchanted blade managed to cut through the robust scales with fire and buried itself deeply in the beasts's neck; the dragon roared, raised it neck quickly and would have thrown me off without my firm hold. I had managed to critically wound it, though, and only seconds later head and neck dropped to the ground, a last small cloud of frost come out of the maw, and the creature was dead.

Meanwhile Jordis, who had not joined the second part of the fight and the close combat, had already grabbed healing potions and treated the two Redguard ladies, so that they were already showing improving health. None of them had critical injuries, but Rayya had been bitten and lost lots of blood, whereas Janina had been kicked by the tail and earned some broken or at least partially fractured bones. The bones in particular needed some special attention, and Antonius fortunately knew how to set them properly before more healing was done; my own restoration magic also helped. The healing potions apparently managed to also replenish a person's blood, and once again I marveled at what magic could do in this world. Meanwhile, we got the usual light show of the dragon's soul moving into the Dragonborn՚s body.

We needed to stay put for about one hour before all of us were fully fit again, and once more I was amazed to see how potent health potions combined with restoration magic could heal injuries quite quickly. I had seen before that critical and life threatening injuries, like the man who had had part of his body almost crushed to pulp by a falling rock in the quarry, needed more and longer attention from professional healers, but this was still quite something. We used the time to have breakfast and talk a little while watching the sunrise and observing nature around us waking up, and eventually we continued our path to Swindler's Den, where we hoped to find Kematu and his fellow Alik'r warriors. Janina and Rayya still needed to take it easy, but they'd likely be fully recovered before we reached our target location.

From the dragon mound we first kept close to the mountain, as some water, a sidearm of the river north of us extending into a small pond without any significant current, came close to the slope. I noticed a few birds of various sizes swimming there, and the larger birds, almost fully white, reminded me of swans on Earth. As Janina and Rayya needed a short break, Antonius got a fishing rod out; surprisingly he had one which could be assembled from several smaller sections. I had not seen him using it before, and I asked him about it:

"Antonius, say, why haven't you used this before, like when we were on that small island close to Solitude?"

"Oh, I just got the rod very recently in Whiterun, when one of my friends, a hold guard, told me about those rods and gave me a short introduction. I had done some fishing in my younger years, and I thought it would be nice to get some variation on the table. You also like to eat fish, don't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I do; salmon is one of my favorites."

That was a reasonable explanation, and I watched him for some time. Apparently my housecarl was a jack of all trades, and he seemed to be doing well. During the half hour we stayed, he managed to catch several small fish he identified as 'Brook Bass', and he promised to prepare them for dinner, if he got a chance. I had no experience at all with fishing, and in the game there was no mechanism to actually do it, but of course fishing made sense.

We moved on, and once we had passed the side arm, we just headed straight towards the smaller elevation which should have our target close to it, if the map was right. About one hour later we had our target location directly ahead and approached with caution, of course; this turned out to be justified, as we could already see from a distance that the location which looked like the entrance was guarded; two people were standing outside and looking around, but they would not be able to see us, as we had good cover in our current position. We decided that Jordis and I would take the guards, and we started to make a detour to arrive at the place from the back side. Surprisingly, there was also a guard at the back of the small hill, but I managed to approach from the side in my best sneak mode and got the man down with binds and gag for now. Jordis and I slowly moved to the front from both sides, and soon we could even hear the two guards talking:

"Man, when is relief due for us?"

"Not for another half hour at least, I think."

"At least we are getting paid well for this boring guard duty."

"Oh yes, we are. I still almost can't believe that we managed to make a deal with those Redguards and that they are paying so well."

"Yes, but you had to admit that this guy, Kematu I think, is really smart. Not only does he try to lure somebody here to get this Redguard lady he mentioned, but he also managed to ally with those other scary guys, the Golden Hands or so."

"No, you got it wrong, they call themselves the Silver Hand."

"What are they after, really?"

"They are enemies of that fighter guild in Whiterun, the Companions. I used to live in the city and have met a few of them."

"So, why are the Silver Hand here and not in the city?"

"They have something they know the Companions are after, and they have started to spread rumors that it can actually be found here. They hope some Companions come to get it and run into the trap."

"Devious. I don't really care about all of that, you know, but the money is right, and our boss certainly keeps that coming, just by us doing guard duty and a few other things. We only need to remember to just pretend to be tough guards, and if somebody claims and knows Kematu՚s name, let them pass. The Redguard will want to talk to them first, and if he doesn't like the talk, both our friends inside and the Silver Hand people will certainly make sure that this problem is quickly dealt with."

"Yeah, you are right about that."

Wow, that was really very interesting and much more than what I had expected. For a start I thought that it might be good to wait for the relief coming out, as that would allow us to capture four bandits rather than just two. Jordis and I nodded at each other and waited some more, but the two guards were not speaking any more for now, until two other bandits eventually came out of the cave entrance. When the two relieved guards had their back to us and were close to the door, Jordis and I first rushed the newcomers and than also grabbed the two other guards; we did not have to worry about noise, as any shouts out here would certainly not be heard inside the cave, and thus we quickly had four bandits on the ground, all bound. I waved to our companions, and we got the guard from the back side over here as well.

Now, already at this time, before we had even entered the place, we had five prisoners, and it was going to be an issue what to do with them and more we might have soon. On the other hand, I did not think that we'd able to easily capture all of them; Kematu and his Alik'r would sure offer a fight. When I looked around again I saw a group of people approaching us from the south, and I wondered who those people could be? Friends or foe? Help or more opponents?

[Author's Notes: The song 'Der Mond ist aufgegangen' is one of my favorite ones in reality, too, and it's sometimes used as a lullaby. The text was written by Matthias Claudius, a German poet of the 18th and early 19th century.

B'lushona had never had his hands on the Anniversary Edition with the 'Fishing CC'.]