“I’m back, Galmar,” Frina called as she made her way into the camp yet again. “The Legate was a little wary about my armor but I told him I was just trying to blend in on the road. That’s true enough. He believed the document and even gave me some money for a drink. I came back here instead.”
“Good job!” Galmar said. “Ulfric was right about you. You’ve got real fire in you. I like that. I’m glad to have you with us.”
He was right about me? What has he said?
“Now then, there’s no time to waste. You’re going to Fort Snowhawk. If the Legate thinks we’re nowhere nearby, now is the time to strike. Meet the brothers preparing for the attack. Oh, and there’s someone here you might want to travel with. Last I saw he was out talking to the quartermaster. Talos guide you both.”
“Someone I…” Frina was confused for a moment. Could it be Ulfric? Did he come to lead us into battle? “Thank you, sir!” she cried, and dashed out of the tent and across the yard. She peered from side to side, searching for the oversized pauldrons and blue drape of Ulfric’s armor, but saw nothing of the sort. Her heart sank; she slowed to a stop and frowned.
Well now I just feel stupid. Of course Ulfric didn’t come out here to the middle of nowhere and even if he had, why in the world would Galmar say that I of all people would want to travel with him? It’s not like we…
“Hey there!” she heard from behind her. “Just going to run past and not even say hello?”
Frina laughed at the familiar voice, and turned to smile at its source.
“Roggi! Galmar said there was someone here I might want to travel with, and he was right. We’re going to go take over another fort, what do you have to say about that?”
Roggi grinned. “I say that I’m happy Ulfric sent me out here to do this rather than sending me to the dungeon to twist arms. I like this work better.” He took her by the arms. “I must have just missed you in Windhelm. Let me look at you. You don’t seem any worse for wear.” He dropped his hands and stepped back.
Frina laughed. “Well I do wish you’d been with me earlier. I fought a dragon. I could have used your help.”
Roggi’s eyes got round. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yes. I had this staff to conjure a wraith and used that and a lot of arrows. The Thalmor helped, though.”
Roggi’s brow furrowed and he cocked his head to one side. “The Thalmor… helped?”
She giggled at his expression. This seems like old times. My big brother Roggi. “Well they were kind of after me, but the dragon had other ideas. It was actually a bit of a miracle that I survived, Roggi. I have greater respect than ever before for what you and Dardeh do. Speaking of which,” she said, looking around for a set of broad shoulders in black armor and seeing only the same group of Stormcloak soldiers that had been waiting impatiently, “where is he?”
Roggi sighed. “He’s not here.”
Something about the tone of his voice had Frina’s head snapping back around so that she could look him in the eyes. “He wasn’t hurt in the Rift, was he? He didn’t…”
Roggi snorted, and shook his head. “No, he’s not dead, Frina. I wouldn’t be here if he had gotten hurt or died.” He shuddered, visibly. “I can’t even imagine what I’d be, but it wouldn’t be here. Tell you what, let’s start on our way before Galmar comes out and yells at us.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Tell me what’s going on with Dardeh.”
“I’m surprised. I thought you didn’t care for him,” Roggi said with a tiny smirk. “Alright then. Fort Greenwall went well, but Dar is…” He raised his hands up in a gesture of frustration. “He’s not in his right mind, Frina. It’s a really long story and it has something to do with his ancestors, and with being Dragonborn, and he needed to get away before he did something really awful. He’s gone to find his sister, in Riften, to see if she can help.”
He tugged on her arm and started walking; Frina nodded and followed along. They made their way out of the camp, running quietly along the edge of the marsh and then cutting south, up the hillside. After a few minutes of travel, she raised the issue again.
“So what’s the long story about Dardeh’s ancestors?”
Roggi gave her a sideways glance and snorted.
“Don’t snort at me, Roggi. No, I didn’t like Dardeh very much at first, but I can see how connected you two are, even if it’s taken some time to get used to the idea. And he was… nice to me. Like he understood how confused I was about the whole thing. And he loves Talos. I can’t not care about him. So. Tell me. What’s the problem?”
“Alright, alright. Well the truth of the matter is that his father – who abandoned Dar’s mother before he was born – had a contract to kill Ulfric, before he was killed himself.” Roggi didn’t look at her; rather, as they emerged from the woods onto the roadway, he peered from side to side through the snow and fog, checking for threats.
Frina stopped short. Icy fingers of dread crept up around her throat. A contract… to kill… Ulfric?
The implications rushed through her mind. There were only a few types of people who got contracts to kill people. The Morag Tong, for one. The Dark Brotherhood, for another. Was Dardeh…?
“Are you coming, or not?” Roggi called from a few paces up the road.
Frina shuddered, and ran ahead to meet him.
“Wait, Roggi. Dardeh is supposed to kill Ulfric?”
“No. No. That was his father.” Roggi ran his hand over his face and sighed. “Well… it’s complicated. His father was Dark Brotherhood, it seems. Dar never knew his father. But not long after he and I started travelling together he started getting visions of him. Dreams. Uh… visitations, I guess, the way he describes it. He keeps hearing his father tell him to finish it.”
He started walking again, shaking his head. “I don’t know, Frina. I’m worried about him. He’s so angry these days. And you’ve seen how powerful he is. He and Ulfric had a few run-ins early on and they really don’t like each other much, and I fear I’m the reason. So I agreed he should go to see Sayma. Maybe she can help. Something has to help. Otherwise something really bad is going to happen.”
Frina walked silently beside him for awhile, trying to sort it all out. I guess it makes sense that Ulfric would be a target. Enough people were against him from back in the Great War, and he is technically rebelling against the Empire now…
“I guess he is pretty much the biggest threat the Empire has, especially since the Emperor was killed.”
Roggi snorted. “I’m not worried about Ulfric, Frina. Ulfric and I have had too much water flow beneath the bridge for me to be personally concerned about him. Yes, I want him to succeed. But it’s Dardeh I worry for.”
“Huh,” Frina said. “I’m still confused. He told me about it, you know.”
Roggi stopped walking. He didn’t look at her, but he stopped.
“Who told you about what?”
“Ulfric. He told me about what happened between the two of you.”
Frina stared at her brother in confusion as the color drained from his face. He turned to her and took her by the arms again.
“What exactly did Ulfric tell you?”
I don’t understand this. Why is he looking at me like this? The pressure on her arms grew greater; Roggi’s expression revealed that he wasn’t aware of how tightly he was gripping.
“He told me that he was in love with Briinda. That he wanted to marry her. That he tried to change her mind about you, and tried to change your mind about her, and it didn’t work.”
His eyes were… unreadable. Unfathomable. She felt as though he could see everything there was to know about her simply by watching the way she breathed. Suddenly Frina remembered that the hands gripping her arms ever more tightly were those of the Inquisitor, the hands that had made the man in Ulfric’s dungeon scream in agony, and she started to panic. She squirmed.
“Ow, Roggi, that’s too much. You’re hurting my arms.”
Roggi’s eyes widened; it seemed as though he came back to himself with an almost audible shift. He dropped his hands immediately, and stepped back. “I’m sorry. I’m… so sorry, Frina. It’s just that I…” His eyes narrowed, then, and his brow furrowed. “That’s what he told you?”
Frina nodded and rubbed her arms. “Yes. I thought it was kind of sweet, actually, how he realized that the two of you were meant for each other and he backed down. And he said…” As the moment replayed itself in her mind she giggled in spite of herself.
“He said what?”
“That you didn’t believe it but that you could have had anyone in the world. I think he really does like you, Roggi.”
She expected to see a smile. Or something. She did not expect the long silence that followed, with Roggi’s head dropping down. She did not expect to watch him stare at the ground, the muscles in his jaws working as he searched for words.
“How is it that he happened to be telling you these things?”
“We had dinner together. He was just talking. He wanted me to know why sometimes things were a little strained between the two of you.”
“Is that all that happened?” Roggi raised his head slowly to look at her. She thought she saw several things in his expression: relief, perhaps, but something else. Wariness. Maybe even anger. Her own temper started to rise.
Well what business is it of his, anyway? I know they were at odds over Briinda but that was years and years ago. It’s not as though Ulfric and I fell into bed together. Although I suppose that is what Ulfric was hoping for, maybe. It sounded that way to me. But he was a gentleman about it when I told him I was afraid. Why should I tell Roggi all of that?
“Not all, Roggi, but certainly nothing for you to be concerned about. He was…”
“I don’t like what I’m thinking that means. Frina,” he said, reaching for her hands. “You can’t believe anything that man tells you. You just can’t. He’ll do anything to get what he wants.”
Frina felt tendrils of anger start to creep up her spine and grasp at her temples. “Are you saying he lied to me?”
“I’m sure in his mind everything he said was the absolute truth. It’s true, he wanted your sister. It’s true that he tried to get between us. It’s true,” he said again, his voice dropping. “But you can’t let him get his hooks into you.”
Frina saw red. She snatched her hands away from Roggi and started stomping her way down the road again.
“You are not my keeper, Roggi,” she snapped. “I don’t quite understand why you think it’s any of your business what I did with Ulfric, or why you have so little faith in me that you would think one kiss would do me some permanent harm.”
“So that’s how it is after all,” his voice came from behind her. She heard his footsteps as he hurried to catch up to her. “I guess it really is a good thing Dar went south. I don’t know whether I could keep him under control if he thought Ulfric was having his way with you, too.”
Frina was truly exasperated. Nothing he’d said really made any sense to her unless she saw it as him treating her like the child she had been when he was married to her sister, the child she hadn’t been since her mother and father fled Skyrim in grief, taking her with them.
“Well I’m a grown woman, Roggi. A warrior, just like you. They are calling me Snow-Hammer these days. I fought at Fort Sungard while you and Dardeh were in the Rift. Ralof and I captured a huge shipment of riches up near Markarth. I helped Galmar forge documents and took them to the Legate near here and I fought a dragon. Without the two of you. I can handle myself.”
She looked at their surroundings. This is not the time to be arguing these things. She lowered her voice and hissed at Roggi.
“And we need to shut up and pay attention now, because we’re coming up on the path to the fort and I really, really don’t want to be the cause of this attack failing, do you?”
Indeed, Fort Snowhawk stood just off the road to their right. It seemed quiet there; she could see the light of a few torches flickering, their movements giving away how few men were posted on its walls. It looked as though Galmar’s forgery had worked and that they truly had caught the Imperials unprepared.
She crouched, and moved deeper into the shadows alongside the road. It was dark, and cold, but the wind had dropped and she was afraid of alerting those sentries that there were. Behind her, she heard Roggi sigh.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he moved up beside her. “You’re always going to be Briinda’s kid sister to a part of my head and it isn’t fair to you, I know. I just… be careful, with him, Frina. Be careful with Ulfric. I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve known him for a long, long time now.”
She turned to look at him. Roggi did look sorry. And concerned. And genuine. And she couldn’t stay annoyed with him, no matter what.
“I know you have. So has Galmar. And Galmar would lay down his life for Ulfric.”
Roggi frowned, sadly, she thought. He nodded. “I know he would. Just… be careful.”
Frina dropped back beside Roggi and gave him a quick one-armed hug. “I will. Thank you. He’s really… special, Roggi. To me, I mean.”
He nodded again. “I am beginning to see that. I hope everything will be alright.”
Then he pointed ahead of them. “I think I see the others. Up behind those rocks over there.”
There were a number of blue-clad figures crouched under the trees and behind the boulders on their left, just above the roadway. As Frina reached them, the leader silently split the group, sending half back the way she and Roggi had come and waving the two of them forward to descend the other side of the rise, directly across the road from the fort’s main gate.
Frina hung back a bit as the Stormcloaks rushed the Imperial barricade. She could see a few figures atop the fort’s old towers, silhouetted against the light of a purplish aurora. It was the perfect opportunity to pick off a few enemies before getting into the heart of the battle. One of them, an archer, was too focused on the fighting directly below him to notice the arrow coming at him from across the road; he cried out and fell back as it struck him. She finished him off with a second shot and began focusing on the man who had been standing beside him. That man, though, jumped down onto a ledge in Fort Snowhawk’s façade and disappeared into the darkness.
Seven or eight more Stormcloaks ran by on either side of Frina. Well, she thought, any surprise I had is gone; best move in closer.
She circled around to the right of the barricades just as several Imperials dropped down off the same tower she’d been targeting a second before, and she swore under her breath that she’d lowered her bow too soon. They, and a mage from inside the fort’s walls, rushed out past the barricades and attacked.
It was bedlam. It was dark, bodies were everywhere, and the noise was overwhelming. She pulled out her combat weapons and started hacking at everything that looked like an Imperial, hoping that she was avoiding her allies. To her side, an Imperial started yelling that he’d suffered worse during training, only to be cut short as Roggi slid up beside her and hammered his blade down through the man’s shoulder. It felt like a lifetime, but finally a path was cleared and the Stormcloak forces swarmed through the gate and into the courtyard of the fort itself.
It was clear that the enemy was mostly on the towers’ roofs and on the walls. Roggi was looking up as he ran forward; Frina took a few steps in and narrowly missed being pierced by an arrow from above. She turned and grabbed her bow, firing alongside another Stormcloak archer at no fewer than four figures just above them. Two of them dropped, whether from Frina’s arrows or someone else’s, she couldn’t tell. Behind her, the sounds of battle were even more frantic than before; amidst the screams and clashing of arms she caught a few distinct words.
“I’m going to put you down!”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Not like this!”
As the men atop the walls ducked out of sight Frina swiveled and ran through the second gate into a smaller courtyard filled with tables and dead men. There was a short stairway to her right, with a man scurrying along the wall above it. She was about to take aim at him when a sound to her left had her full attention.
“Come on! Come on!” Roggi yelled.
Then there was a sickening crunch, and a moan.
Frina scanned the area, frantically, and saw what she’d hoped never to see. Roggi was just past the next archway, on his knees, gasping. Behind him, an Imperial archer was nocking an arrow and advancing on him with a cruel smile crossing his face.
“No!” Frina shouted, dashing through the opening while drawing her own bow. She stepped past Roggi and swung left as the Imperial faded back, finding him and firing at him.
“This is what you want, huh?” the man snarled at her, taking aim.
Frina leaned left just enough that his arrow whizzed past her. Then she loosed her own.
“No, it really isn’t!”
The arrow struck the man in the chest and he collapsed, moaning. Behind her, Frina heard Roggi growling.
“Bad idea!”
She turned to see what he meant and then shrieked as a sword ripped through the back of her armor. Only the fact that she’d been turning had prevented her from being sliced in two. She gasped and started healing herself; Roggi dashed past her and fell forward into the Imperial with the bulk of his weight and his momentum carrying the dragonbone sword down and through the man.
Both of them stopped for just a moment, Roggi downing healing potions and Frina casting her spell. They didn’t have a chance to speak, but they shared a concerned and yet relieved glance. A Stormcloak woman rushed past them to attack yet another Imperial archer who appeared from around the corner.
“Not impressed!” the man sneered, just before the Stormcloak drew her sword and cut him down.
Frina ran around the ledges atop the walls and then jumped down into the smithing yard, where several Imperial soldiers had backed up into the shed that housed the workbench and forge. The woman who had been beside Frina also spied them, and pulled her bow, shouting “Gods damn you!”
I’m not waiting for them to break free.
Frina sprinted into the clump of soldiers, whirling and swinging her weapons as quickly and as hard as she could. One of the Imperials crumpled into a pile at her feet. She backed out of the shed, giving her fellow Stormcloak the chance to fire a few more arrows at the remaining enemies.
They emerged from the shed into the open and moved to attack the archer. Frina saw another Stormcloak coming down the stairs across from her and met her glance for just a moment; then the two of them rushed forward to cut off the Imperials. The woman on the stairs took a massive swing with her halberd and missed, but Frina stepped up behind the Imperial and cut him down with her pick. Just as she did that, though, she heard the juicy sound of a sword sliding through armor and flesh, and turned to see another Imperial soldier skewer the archer they’d been trying to protect.
“No!” she screamed, slicing at him as hard as she could. Her pick caught his head and killed him instantly; and the momentum of the blow threw him forward against the wall.
A few minutes later it was finished. One or two additional Imperial soldiers came into the forge area, but there were two or three Stormcloaks for each one of them, and they didn’t last long. Frina was nearly knocked off her feet by one of them and turned to see that Roggi and a Stormcloak swordsman were chasing him down the stairs; Roggi caught up to him first and lifted him wholly off the ground on his sword, then slammed him back to earth.
Frina pushed her helmet and scarf off for air and slowly surveyed the scene before her. The three bodies draining themselves into the smithy had her staring, blankly.
I killed two of those men myself.
I never really thought there would be so many of them that would die by my hand.
“That went well,” Roggi said behind her. She turned and smiled at him as he approached.
“You saved me up there,” she said, nodding toward the walls above.
“Not before you saved me. I thought I was a goner there for a second. That’s one of the closest calls I’ve had in a long time.” He grinned at her.
“Don’t you dare get yourself killed, Roggi Knot-Beard. I couldn’t bear it.”
“Nah. Don’t worry about me. I have a deal with Dar that I’m going to be making him tea when I’m an old man.”
Frina giggled at the mental picture; then her eyes filled as she considered the sweetness of it. She reached up and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, and coughed.
“I guess we need to go back to Windhelm now.”
“Yeah. I think we should go as far as Dawnstar and grab a boat. What do you think?”
Frina nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’m… tired.”
“And it’ll be faster, too…”
The way Roggi’s voice dribbled off into nothing made Frina smirk. “And?”
He grimaced. “And we’ll see Ulfric faster.”
“Don’t start.”
“No. I won’t. I understand how it is. Trust me, I really do. Just promise me something.”
“Of course, Roggi. What is it?”
“Just… be careful. Ok?”
He looked so earnest, so unlike the angry, threatening Inquisitor she’d seen earlier that she couldn’t help but smile.
“I will. And thank you for caring about me, even after all these years.”
He nodded, and cleared his throat.
“Let’s go.”
Roggi extended a hand to her. She smiled again and took it, grateful for the warmth of his companionship as they left the fort and started back toward the east.