Chapter 90: Stony Creek Lake
[20th of Morning Star 4E 202]
My two housecarls Jordis and Antonius had spent a few days in Windhelm, and we had had time and opportunity to talk to Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak a lot. Above and beyond learning about his views, we had had lots of conversations with various citizens, and we had collected a number of quests, culminating in the raid on 'Uttering Hills Cave'. Eventually, we had left the city, but rather than traveling right back home, I had decided to detour towards 'Stony Creek Cave', following a lead from the bard Illdi. When passing the hot spring area, I could not resist the temptation to relax in the hot water for some time, and we found a nice and protected spot for a night camp not far away, close to the eastern border of the hot spring area.
After breakfast on the next day, we found the road again, and we started to follow the many turns leading us uphill. For a moment I wondered if it would have been a good choice to visit Eldergleam Sanctuary again on the day before; the cave was really amazing, and I had greatly enjoyed my first time in there, when I had been there with Vilja; yesterday, we could have spent the night in the sanctuary instead of outside. I sure wanted to go there again at some time, but for now I was eager to find our next target and forced my thoughts to go in that direction again. Looking around and specifically to my left, I tried to find out if we'd better take the side road up to a location marked as 'Mzulft' or wait for the next branch; the map was somewhat unspecific, and the marker for the cave we were looking for did not have a path close to it. Well, the map was not the highest quality one, and I could not expect it to show all details; we'd have to explore. Explore we did, and we spent maybe one hour to check out the few buildings in the Mzulft area, without entering any of them. I did not really know how to pronounce that word properly, but, based on how the buildings looked, that was clearly a Dwemer location, and many of the Dwemer places had odd names. Well, most likely the names had been normal and not odd at all for the Dwemer, but I considered them odd, just like also many names in languages like Polish or Czech sounded odd for many German people and were hard to pronounce properly. In my old life, I had had a Polish colleague at work; his name had been 'Grzegorz', and I had needed weeks and many attempts to pronounce his name even remotely correctly. Anyway, I vaguely remembered that this location, Mzulft, had some significance for an important quest or two; wasn't this the place where one met some strange researchers and found something important related to the College of Winterhold? For the umpteenth time I wished that I had an iPad with a complete copy of the Skyrim Wiki pages; naturally, my housecarls had heard about the location, but had no idea about any significance for a quest.
Anyway, the cave we were looking for was not around here, but from one location furthest to the east we heard a few voices like from soldiers. Why should there be soldiers in this area? We got back to the main road, followed it south for about twenty minutes, and took the next turn left. After a few turns of the steep side road there was a side path to the left, and we followed that one, until it ended at a small lake. Somebody had mentioned that there was a small lake just at the cave entrance, so that we should have a look around. Where was the cave entrance? Was this the right lake? We spread out to check, with Antonius and Jordis following the lake shore to the right and me and my saber cats going left. I had to move around a larger group of bushes, and when I met the shore again, I could see something which looked like a gap between the rocks on the other side. Antonius got into the water and waded around the cliff blocking progress on the shore, and when he got there, he waved. So, it appeared that we had found the cave entrance.
Before we got in there, though, I decided to follow the shore and check out the environment. A few moments ago I thought that I had seen some movement to the north, where the ground rose from the lake up towards the hills, and maybe it was a good idea to make sure that we did not have any enemies in our back. I asked my two housecarls to stay put and started to carefully proceed north, with my two saber cats close to my side. While I stayed behind bushes, I could slowly go ahead without being seen, and about twenty minutes later I notice a few tents and some activity, including soldiers talking to each other. To my surprise I realized that this was a camp of the Imperial Legion, right here in Eastmarch hold, and the location explained the voice I had heard earlier, from the other side near the Mzulft buildings. Wow! I wondered if Jarl Ulfric knew about that? Probably he did not; he would not have tolerated that. His potential knowledge of this camp was, at this time at least, not really my business, but I had to be concerned about my own safety. After all, according to the Imperials, I was an outlaw and thus I needed to be careful. If, by any chance, they followed us into the cave, we might get into a very dangerous situation. On the other hand, maybe there was a chance to play them against the bandits?
Anyway, I decided to be careful, and when I was back at the lake, I told my two housecarls about what I had found and asked Antoninus to stay outside and hide, just in case. Jordis and I, followed by Hanni and Nanni, entered the cave through the entrance from the lake. As soon as our eyes had adapted to the dim light inside, we saw a corpse – a dead Breton was lying over a pole or beam right in front of us. Checking out the environment we also noticed a few skeletons in the water.
Once we had found the path out of the water by stepping on some planks, there was only one obvious way forward, by following the small stream of water. Naturally, we were in full sneaking mode; I was first, and I had my crossbow ready. It was possible or even likely that I had been in that cave when playing the game before and I vaguely recalled that I had seen the corpse across the beam, but I did not remember any details on the cave layout or the enemies we might encounter. So, we just had to be extra careful, and the caution turned out to be justified. Just before I was going to look around the next corner, I could hear two voices, a male and a female one, and after a few sentences spoken by them it was obvious that they were bandits; they talked about loot and stolen goods and robbing more people. Now the question came up how to eliminate two bandits without alerting any others; I could probably silently kill one of them, but not both at the same time. My blond housecarl looked at me and pointed at her bow, and I realized that we could work together. I nodded, and when I saw the two bandits looking in the other direction, we silently stepped around the corner, Jordis released an arrow towards the bandit on the left and I took the one on the right with a bolt. We both scored hits; the one hit by me was dead right away, while the other one was only injured; however, as Jordis had hit the throat, the wounded bandit was unable to shout or scream, and I quickly ended his suffering by cutting the head off with my axe.
By now, almost half a year after I had arrived in Skyrim, killing a person no longer made me vomit or at least feel sick; I had learned that killing was at some times required, but I still felt uneasy about it. I might never become really used to it, but maybe I shouldn't anyway.
The two dead bandits did not have much on them; we only found a few septims and a couple of bottle with mead on them, in addition to their armor and weapons. At least we had managed to silence them without much noise, so that we could expect to proceed and hopefully surprise more bandits. It was not realistic to assume that those two had been alone, and so we proceeded cautiously. A few turns later we saw a path branching off to the right, and for this one I asked Jordis if she was willing to try to lure bandits out. She smiled, handed over her bow and sword to me, opened up her armor partially, and while I hid behind the last corner, with my two saber cats next to me, she proceeded. Deliberately she made some noise and splashed water around with her feet, and indeed, quickly a sturdy looking man came down from the branch path, looked at her, and said:
"What a nice surprise! Say, young lady, did you get lost?"
"Oh, I guess so, yes. My friend staid with the others further down, and I was supposed to ask for the right way here. Can you help me out?"
I could almost see the man's eyes getting bigger from my position, and a smirk appeared on his face:
"Sure, I can help you out. Why don't you follow me up there and make yourself comfortable?"
When the bandit was out of my sight, I hurried to the next corner, and I watched Jordis following the man up the wooden stairs to a corner with a table, a couple of chairs, and a very crude bed. My housecarl and I had agreed to a couple of signals first, and when she raised her left hand, I released a bolt directly into the bandit's back; at the same time she drove her dagger into the man's throat, so that he slipped down to the ground almost without any noise. I rushed up the stairs, gave Jordis her main weapons back, and we looked around for further potential danger.
So far, we had not found anything really valuable yet, and according to what Illdi had mentioned, there was a good chance that a group of bandits was collecting lots of stolen goods here. On the other hand, we had not seen any storage room yet, and we also had not met anybody who looked like they could be the bandit boss. It was, of course, also possible that most of the bandits were out on a raid, but I would not bet on it.
Around here, the one bandit we had just eliminated had certainly been guarding something, but there was nothing of much value around. Maybe there was something we did not see, like a hidden door, or the valuables and more bandits were to be found further up the small creek. I was tempted to search for a secret door or anything in that direction, but I did not want to be surprised either, and thus the next order of business was to follow the narrow path in the small creek upstream. It was challenging to walk quietly in the water, but distant voices, from many sources, told us that we were not likely to be heard. When we cautiously looked around the last bend, I saw the narrow passage opening up into a large cavern, and there was a lot of furniture inside, like beds, tables and chairs, on the dry side of the hall. A campfire was lit, and most people in the room, likely more than a dozen, were looking in that direction and shouting out for food.
I did not like the situation a lot, as I admitted to myself. We had a large group of bandits here, too many to easily defeat on our own, we had a potential room or set of rooms behind what we suspected a hidden door, and we had an Imperial military camp not very far from the cave exit. At this time, we did not know if the Imperials were aware of the bandits in the cave or not. Maybe a bandit lair in the neighborhood was a good cover for the soldiers who did not want to be noticed that far in enemy territory? Maybe Antonius might have an idea?
Quickly we head downstream and left the cave again, and we sat down with Antonius close to the lake shore south of the cave exit, so that we could observe it and also saw any potential Imperials coming down from their camp.
"Now," I asked, "what can we do? While we have not officially picked a side yet in the Civil War, I am sure that they'd recognize me and try to either kill or arrest me. The bandits are too many for us, and I wonder if we can somehow get both parties busy with each other."
"Busy as in killing?"
I shuddered and admitted: "No, that was not what I originally had in mind, but I guess that I can't hope for the bandits just to get apprehended, right? Now, if the bandits were actually willing to surrender to the authorities, and if those authorities had a base to get them to…"
Quickly I realized that this was not how things worked here, and Antonius quickly commented accordingly:
"My Thane, don't forget that the Imperials themselves need to hide here in this hold. There's no way they'd be willing to escort prisoners around, and even if they somehow got you, I am not sure that they'd actually do that. I am afraid that Tullius does not insist on getting you alive."
"They got Ulfric and his Stormcloaks close to Darkwater Crossing and moved them to Helgen!"
"Yes, but for that they probably had more people, Darkwater Crossing is closer to the hold border, and that was Jarl Ulfric; you may not be as important."
"All right, I get it. So, can we somehow make the bandits attack the Imperial camp?"
"I doubt it. I suspect that they know about the military camp, and they probably have good reasons to not go there."
"And vice versa? Could we make the Imperials attack the bandits in the cave?"
"Hm, what reason should they have to do that? Why should they want to fight in the narrow cave passages?"
"Do we know if the bandits have explored the entire cave?"
"No, I guess that we don't. However, with so many of them around, I doubt that we get a chance to check."
"Now, wait, we have killed a few of the bandits, haven't we?"
"Sure, my Thane; why do you ask?"
"If we can get our hands on some pieces of Imperial weapons and armor, couldn't we drop those in there to make the bandits believe that Imperials have done the kills?"
"Hm, good point" Antonius admitted. "In addition, I could don some Imperial armor, disguise myself a little bit, and go right into the camp. I could claim something like I was with some other soldiers, but the bandits got us."
"This is the start of a plan, Jordis, Antonius. But we need a couple of dead soldiers for that, don't we?"
"At least we need some Imperial weapons and armor."
We discussed the details further, and although we could not be sure that the bandits Jordis and I had defeated had not been discovered yet, we decided to implement the plan quickly. Luck was on our side, as right at this time two Imperial soldiers, one swordsman and one archer, passed the lake, likely returning from a patrol, and although I felt uneasy about that, we killed them. I still preferred not to kill any people who were not attacking us, but on the other hand Tullius had kind of declared war against Fiona and me, so that killing Imperial soldiers seemed to be justified. Antonius took parts of the armor from one of them, and while my Imperial housecarl slowly moved uphill to the Imperial camp, Jordis and I dragged the two dead soldiers into the cave. We placed them strategically next to the two dead bandits in the passage, and once this was done, we clanged some swords against armor to create loud noise like fighting. As soon as we heard voices from deep down in the cave, we ran out of the cave and hid on the left side behind bushes.
Timing was apparently quite right, as I saw a detachment of Imperial soldiers carefully approaching the cave from the north. Antonius was not with them, but may he had claimed to be exhausted and in need of rest in the camp. The soldiers tried to find some proper positions to cover each other, but the cave entrance only allowed access to one person at a time. While they apparently pondered that issue, the first bandit came out of the cave, and before any soldier had a chance to react, the next one followed. The bandits did not even try to wait for their pals, but attacked right away; I could only assume that our ruse had worked, and they really believed in a previous sneak attack by the soldiers. For now, the Imperials had the better position and the advantage of numbers, but more bandits poured out of the cave quickly, so that the soldier leading the others called for a fallback to the shore. There, the archers could become useful, and, like I had hoped, the larger number of bandits was compensated by the more organized fighting of the soldiers. I did not know what exactly Antonius had told them, but I knew that he could very persuasive and convincing, and both sides fought with determination. The bandits had lost half of their number, when a tall and strong male Nords clad in metal armor, probably steel, came out of the cave, and he swung a huge warhammer. The arrows sent in his direction just clanged on his armor without causing any damage, and the Imperials were in big trouble. Three of their swordsmen were cut down within a minute, and soon only three archers were left. Before they had a chance to run, the few remaining bandits were on them, and the small battle was over. Only the bandit boss and two of his cronies had survived, and all three of them were injured.
Jordis looked at me, and I nodded. Of course, this was the right time for us to get involved, and while I focused on the suspected bandit boss with my crossbow, Jordis took the other two, aided by my two saber cats. The second one of my bolts managed to penetrate the bandit's armor, and I heard a yelp. My third bolt hit a weak point on a leg, and the bandit was down on his knees. Now I jumped forward, and as the bad guy had dropped his warhammer, I could get next to him and swing my big battleaxe with full force.
Once this was done, I looked around, but my housecarl had also defeated her own targets, and this was done. I was just about to relax when an arrow hit my right arm with enough force to partially penetrate my leather armor, and I yelped from surprise and pain. My Nord housecarl looked around quickly, and Hanni and Nanni raced off. I saw a second arrow coming and just ducked in time, so that it just scraped my armor, but then I heard yelling and growling. I was too dizzy to check, but I could trust on my housecarl, and indeed soon I heard her calling out that the situation was cleared now.
When she was back, she reported that one Imperial archer had been hiding on the rocks to observe, but that this one was also dead now. Right at this time Antonius came down the hill with a wide grin. He noticed the corpses and told us that only the quartermaster and he had been left in the camp. His story had obviously been believed, and the quartermaster was now 'very deeply asleep', as he called it. While Jordis helped me to get the arrow tip out of my arm, Antonius changed back into his normal attire, and once we had rested for a few minutes, we proceeded back into the cave. As we did not know how many bandits were still in there, I conjured Spirit and sent her in first, followed by myself and my two real saber cats.
This time, we ignored the section on our right and proceeded right to the back part of the cave, heading towards the large cavern we had glimpsed at before. We had gone there earlier, and I did not pay full attention to the ground I was walking on. I saw Spirit ahead of me jumping over something, but stupid me somehow failed to realize potential implications. After a couple of more steps, my left foot caught on something; I lazily looked down, saw a string which had just been torn, and when I looked ahead again, I saw a large object coming at me. My reflexes had never been excellent, and with a quicker reaction I might have been able to evade, specifically as a shout behind me also tried to provide some warning. Now, though, I just wondered what was going on, and when I realized that I had triggered a trap, I already felt a very strong push on my chest. The log which hit me pushed me down to the ground, and the pain from hitting the ground backwards in addition to the hurt of my chest made me black out.
[Author's Notes: Once again, Balu՚s reflexes aren't that great, I guess.
About the languages: Not sure how English native speakers see that, but for a German person some Polish names are really difficult to pronounce; no offense meant, of course, to any native speakers in Poland! To a certain and lesser extent that also applies to Dwemer names – how does one pronounce 'Mzulft' properly?]
