Chapter 20

Chapter 20

     My escape plan had worked beautifully, except for one little hitch: Aetra was still alive.  The skull splitting headache had started directly after I used the Shout, so most of what had followed I hadn’t been able to focus on, but I would have sworn to Talos that the Shout had hit her, no matter what she said about ducking.  It must not have, though, because she would not be alive now if it had. 

     Gods, it would have been so much simpler if she had just died in that cave!  Now I was faced with killing her in cold blood after she had helped me escape, or else letting the traitor live.  Both options were unappealing.  My enemies could say what they wanted about me, but I was no killer. 

     Up until now I had just been riding in a random direction, any direction that was away from the cave, but now I slowed Gormalith to a walk and waited for Aetra to do the same.  “Where are we?” I asked, unable to keep the terseness out of my voice. 

     She hesitated briefly before replying, “A ways to the northwest of Windhelm.” 

    She’s afraid that I’ll gather the Guild and destroy her new hideout the same as I did with the old one, I realized.  “Decide whose side you’re on,” I said shortly, turning Gormlaith to the southeast and spurring her onward.

     I heard the sound of hoof beats behind me as her mare followed, but at the moment I was too tired to care.  Predictably my fears and plans to escape had kept me up the night before, even if I had been able to sleep on that cot.  Sleeping with your hands tied behind your back isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. 

     Thinking about the sleep I’d lost caused me to yawn cavernously, and I brought my mental image of Skyrim back up.  I was still on the northern side of the mountains south of Dawnstar, so I would have to ride to the east for a ways to the pass before I could go south.  The sun was already low in the sky, and I estimated that it would sink entirely behind the horizon in a few hours.  Unless I rode through the night, there was no way I could reach Windhelm before tomorrow evening.  I wasn’t unused to riding during the night, but not when I was already short on sleep.

     I grabbed a handful of Gormlaith’s mane as she stumbled slightly in the deep snow, slipping up her back without the saddle to hold me in place. 

     Lack of sleep presented me with another problem.  After everything Aetra had done, I was not going to let my guard down around her.  A part of me knew this mindset was ridiculous- after all, why would she help me escape just to turn me over to the Summerset Shadows again?- but most of me didn’t care.  Maybe I could make it all the way to Windhelm to the inn tonight….

     The sun sank lower and lower, slowly ceding the sky to the moons.  The night was crisp and clear with no wind or snow, just the crunching sound of the already fallen powder under the horses’ feet. 

     A few hours after sunset the auroras appeared in the sky, and I took my eyes off the ground in front of Gormlaith in order to look at them.  They seemed to shimmer and shake, dancing in the sky like softly rustling leaves.  I watched them, fascinated, as they twisted through the sky in a fantastic pattern of light and color, writhing around like dazzling snakes.  Wait… were they coming closer?

     With a sudden jerk I snapped awake and pushed myself upright again on Gormlaith’s back, saving myself from falling just in time.  Blinking like a falmer in the daylight, I cleared my blurry vision and yawned again.  That’s it, I give up.  If I didn’t fall out of the saddle at this rate it would be a miracle. 

     I asked Gormlaith to halt with my voice since I had no reins, and she obeyed after a couple seconds.  I jumped off and nearly fell when my feet hit the snow and sunk deeper than I expected. 

     Out of the corner of my eye I saw Aetra halt nearby and dismount as well, but by now I was too tired to care where her loyalty lay.  I picked a pine tree that had kept the ground clear of snow with its thick needles and sat down, back against the tree. 

     At least it isn’t windy, I thought as I fell asleep.

     I held up my sword and felt the blade, laughing loudly.  Without expending any effort at all I deflected the sword thrust at me and bashed it out of its owner’s hand, then causally watched as he scrambled to retrieve it.  Blocking another hack, I performed the same move, this time sending the blade flying away.

     Both I and my opponent stopped to watch the weapon clatter away, I looking on with enjoyment and he with fear as it slid remorselessly into the void beyond.  Once it flashed as it fell, a tiny pathetic point of light in the darkness, then vanished. 

     He launched himself at me, hoping to take me off guard, but I lifted one hand and directed a blast of black energy that swirled around him and brought his movement to a dead halt.  I laughed again as I watched him struggle, watched him try to break free of the unbreakable power.

     The fun was over.  I lifted the sword once more and allowed a small smile to remain on my face as I slowly stalked toward the figure still entrapped in the darkness.

     Brynjolf’s face turned even whiter as he tried once more to break the spell.  “Kisvar!”

     I kept moving forward, tightening my grip on the weapon.

     “Kisvar!” he pleaded once more.

     I raised the glimmering blade high in the air and brought it down with a slash on-

     “KISVAR!”

     I jerked into a sitting position, gasping for breath and looking for Brynjolf.  Instead I saw Aetra crouched over me, trying to hold me down.  I shoved her off and scooted backward, looking at my hand like I expected to see a bloody sword.  To my immense relief there was nothing there, but that didn’t stop me from standing up and turning around several times.  No body, either.  But by the Divines, that dream had felt so real!  I had felt the strike of metal on metal as my sword parried Brynjolf’s attacks, felt flesh and bone give way when I-

     I shook the thought away.  It had been a dream, nothing more than a vivid dream….  “What happened?” I asked, still slightly bewildered. 

     “You started muttering words and twitching in your sleep, that’s what happened,” she stated, looking rather annoyed.  “Took me nearly two minutes to wake you up.”

     To my utter annoyance my shoulder had once again started up that constant ache.  I massaged it vigorously with my left hand, trying to soothe the pain.  Why hadn’t it healed fully yet?  “What was I saying?”

     “I don’t know.”  She looked even more annoyed now, if that was humanly possible.  I guess I woke her up out of a really good dream about my death or something.  “You kept repeating some kind of gibberish.”

     Repeating….  And there had been that black energy in the dream, the kind I used in the Shout.  “I wasn’t saying the words of the Shout I learned, was I?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted the answer or not.

     “You could’ve been, yeah.  Come to think of it, I think you were.”  She turned away and went to her horse.

     I sat back down, wearily fingering a buckle on my armor.  Could using the Shout have somehow triggered this?  The dragon had said it was a dangerous power, but he hadn’t said what kind.  I should have asked a lot more questions….

     I stood up again, trying to shake the memory of the dream.  The clarity and vividness of it were not the things that disturbed me most.  In the dream I had been happy.  I had found it enjoyable and fun to kill the man I counted as a friend.  Surely that couldn’t be a normal dream to have, even by dream standards. 

     “Let’s just get moving,” I said abruptly, despite that the sun had not even risen enough to send light over the mountain tops.  I could feel the lingering effects of tiredness, but no way in Oblivion was I going back to sleep.

     Halfway down the first slope I realized I was absolutely ravenous, so I felt around in the pocket I reserved for food and found some grilled chicken breast.  I guess the night before I had just been too tired to think of anything at all.  Even if I had let my guard down around Aetra, I should have at least placed some rune traps around the campsite to ward off any wild beasts or bandits.

     I set my jaw determinedly.  No more lapses, no more mistakes.  Despite my little detour, I had done what I had set out from Solitude to do-  I had found the dragon and learned the first three Words of the Shout.  If three out of five Words of the Shout could kill four men at once, surely it would be powerful enough to kill Miraak.  Anyway, the dragon had said that I would be forced to learn the other two Words now, and that there was no other way.  I had absolutely no idea what that meant, but I had no leads on the other words, so I decided to give that up and focus on other things.

     My next priority was finding Miraak.  What I had realized before still held true.  If I could kill Miraak, this whole Imperial uprising would at best crumble and at worst at least not have a wing of dragons at its back.  Either way was a win/win situation, as far as I was concerned.  The Stormcloaks still held all the Holds of Skyrim, which were the most defensible and populated positions.  The Imperials could not rival us in numbers, yet with Miraak behind them they dwarfed us in strength.

     So again, Miraak.  He had been in Skyrim for a couple weeks without surfacing as far as I knew, so I had no idea whatsoever where in Skyrim he could be.  The best place to go when you have no idea where to go in Skyrim is always the nearest inn.  All strangers and travelers eventually passed through the inns of Skyrim, and the innkeepers listened to all the gossip.  Inns could be a better place to garner information than all the messengers in the Stormcloak army. 

     “Hail, travelers!” 

     Gormlaith spooked slightly at the sudden sound of voices in the silent hills and I nearly slid off over her side.  Snatching at her mane to stay upright, I just managed to avoid falling ungracefully into the snow.  Sitting upright I looked at the group of three riders with more annoyance than normal, but managed to reply evenly enough.  “Hail yourself.  What brings you out here?”

     The Bosmer in the lead on her dappled horse answered, “Questing, what else?  And you?”

     I looked at them more closely.  They were clearly a group of warriors.  The Wood Elf at the front had an air of command to her voice, much like….  A pang ran through my body as I remembered Frea.  She carried a long bow on her back and a quiver of arrows, along with one small dagger at her side.  One of the others, a Nord with long, brown hair, a muscular, heavy set build, and an enormous steel broadsword, I could swear I had seen before somewhere.  The last was also a Nord with a long brown beard, slightly shorter hair, and light leather armor, as well as a one-handed blade.  All this registered within my mind in an instant as I replied, “We were taking a short trip to visit family in Winterhold.  We’re on our way back to Windhelm now,” I lied easily.   

     “So are we,” the Wood Elf said affably.  “Care to travel with us?  Better safety against bandits that way.”  She rubbed her horse’s neck.  “By the way, I’m Cerawyn, Harbinger of the Companions, and these two are Farkas and Torvar.”

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