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The road north to Whiterun was a series of fairly steep switchbacks down the side of the mountain that held Bleak Falls Barrow, and it was a strenuous descent with a heavy load on his back.\u00a0 He stopped for a moment, midway down, to catch his breath; and as he stood there the unease began to seep away.\u00a0 The place was beautiful.\u00a0 The Reach was rocky and steep, too; but here at the transition between the forests of Falkreath hold and the wide plain of Whiterun the river roared and hurtled its way joyfully down the slope, salmon leaping upstream through the rocks.\u00a0 Deer and rabbits ran in and out of the woods, across the road, and along the river.\u00a0 Sometimes wolves chased them.\u00a0 He could see birds flitting about in the treetops but couldn\u2019t hear them over the tumult of the river. He could see the first signs of people, just at the foot of the hill, a roof peeking up from beyond the edge of the roadway.\u00a0 It\u2019s so\u2026 alive, he thought.\u00a0 I love it. I \u2026 could settle here.<\/p>\n
The break had given him his second wind. I don\u2019t know what any of it means, he thought, but I\u2019ll find out when the time comes. I\u2019m sure of it. \u00a0He chuckled. \u00a0Ma\u2019s speaking to me now.\u00a0 She would be saying that. \u00a0Be patient, Dar.\u00a0 You\u2019ll know when the time is right. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sun, smiling, feeling its warmth as well as hers.<\/p>\n
That sense of hope \u2013 and the awe he had felt on first seeing Whiterun and the enormous bulk of Dragonsreach rising from the surrounding plains — had carried him all the way to the city gates and here to the threshold of the Jarl\u2019s castle.\u00a0 But he would still be glad to rid himself of the ridiculous chunk of carved stone he\u2019d stumped all the way down the hillside.<\/p>\n
The Jarl of Whiterun Hold, Balgruuf the Greater, was seated at the rear of his audience hall, flanked by his steward on his right and his housecarl, an imposing, red-haired Dunmer woman, on his left.\u00a0 She stepped forward, sword drawn, and stopped Dardeh before he could reach the Jarl, who was engrossed in conversation with his steward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is the meaning of this interruption?\u201d she snarled. \u201cThe Jarl is not receiving visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve come from Riverwood, at Gerdur\u2019s request,\u201d Dardeh told her.\u00a0 \u201cA dragon has leveled Helgen. Burned it to the ground. \u00a0Last I saw, it was heading this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA dragon! Well, that explains why the guards let you in,\u201d she said. She\u2019s good, Dardeh thought.\u00a0 Took no more than a moment to realize the gravity of the situation and drop her threat.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019d better speak to the Jarl\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWho\u2019s this, then?\u201d Balgruuf interrupted.\u00a0 He was, to Dardeh\u2019s eye, about the same vintage as Ulfric or slightly older, a Nord with a heavily-lined, sharp-featured face, fading blonde hair and beard, wearing fine clothing and an ornate circlet. He was sizing Dardeh up with eyes that missed not a single detail. This is a smart one, Dardeh thought. I\u2019ll bet he was quite something to see, once upon a time, a real figure to command respect on a battlefield.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve come from Helgen,\u201d he repeated.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s been destroyed, and the dragon was headed this way.\u00a0 Although that was close to two days ago now; if it hasn\u2019t attacked yet there\u2019s still time for Whiterun to prepare.\u201d Except that this whole city is wooden.\u00a0 There\u2019s not a single place in it that would survive dragon fire, especially not this beautiful old keep. \u201cBut Riverwood is in need of assistance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Balgruuf turned to his steward, a well-dressed Imperial.\u00a0 \u201cBy Ysmir, Irileth was right! What do you say now, Proventus? Irileth, send a detachment to Riverwood at once.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Housecarl nodded. \u201cI\u2019ve already begun mustering my men near the gate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Proventus flustered, practically choking in his attempt to speak.\u00a0 \u201cMy lord, the Jarl of Falkreath will see that as a provocation and think we\u2019re preparing to attack!\u201d<\/p>\n
Balgruuf\u2019s eyes darkened and so did his voice, which he raised so that it filled the hall.\u00a0 \u201cEnough! I won\u2019t sit idly by while a dragon burns my home and slaughters my people!\u201d<\/p>\n
Proventus backed down.\u00a0 \u201cYes, my lord. Now if you don\u2019t mind, I will return to my duties.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be best,\u201d Balgruuf answered, curtly.<\/p>\n
Well now.\u00a0 A little friction between these two, Dardeh thought.\u00a0 But look at how Balgruuf handled the situation. He\u2019s angry, but he\u2019s still polite and respectful.\u00a0 I like this man. He cares about his hold. He listens to his advisors but he has a mind of his own and expects to be obeyed. No nonsense.\u00a0 I like him.<\/p>\n
Balgruuf turned to Dardeh.\u00a0 \u201cWell done.\u00a0 You\u2019ve done Whiterun a service, and I won\u2019t forget it.\u201d\u00a0 He narrowed his eyes, looking Dardeh over. \u201cThere is another thing you could do for me, suitable for someone of your particular talents, perhaps?\u201d<\/p>\n
Now what, Dardeh thought.\u00a0 I really wanted to go speak to the court mage.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want to be rude, though, so he waited.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome,\u201d Balgruuf said, rising from his throne.\u00a0 \u201cLet\u2019s go find Farengar, my court wizard.\u00a0 He\u2019s been looking into a matter related to these dragons and \u2026 rumors of dragons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh!\u00a0 Well there we go, I\u2019m going to have a personal introduction to the mage, no less.<\/em><\/p>\n Farengar, a mousy man with all the personality of a doorstop, wanted Dardeh to search for a stone tablet that might possibly be in Bleak Falls Barrow. Dardeh had to work to keep his mouth from falling open.<\/p>\n \u201cA stone tablet?\u00a0 In Bleak Falls Barrow?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes, it is said to hold a map of dragon burial sites.\u201d<\/p>\n Dardeh pulled the awkward, heavy stone from his pack, and watched Farengar\u2019s eyes widen.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just there, and found this on the body of one of the draugr who tried to kill me,\u201d he said, grinning.\u00a0 \u201cAny chance this is it? It looks like it has some kind of map on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Farengar placed it on his table, grinning from ear to ear, revealing that he had some life in him after all.\u00a0 \u201cThe Dragonstone of Bleak Falls Barrow!\u00a0 You\u2019ve already found it!\u201d \u00a0He turned to look at Dardeh, still grinning.\u00a0 \u201cYou are cut from a different cloth than the usual brutes the Jarl sends me!\u00a0 Now my work can begin \u2013 the work of the mind, sadly undervalued these days.\u201d<\/p>\n Dardeh half expected him to start rubbing his hands together in glee.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I\u2019m happy that was it.\u00a0 I had been hoping you would take it off my hands anyway, because it\u2019s heavy.\u00a0 It looked interesting, though.\u201d<\/p>\n He knelt down, rearranging things in his pack, getting ready to leave.\u00a0 There\u2019s an inn down at the bottom of this hill, he thought, and I could go for a nice pint of ale and a comfortable bed.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll start asking around about my sister. Maybe I\u2019ll have some luck this time. It\u2019s a big enough place that almost anyone might have come through here. He was just about done, standing to leave, when the frantic sounds of a person running across the wooden floors of the keep, drawing nearer, caught his attention.<\/p>\n \u201cFarengar! Come quickly!\u201d\u00a0 Irileth burst through the entrance to the wizard\u2019s area.\u00a0 \u201cA dragon has been sighted near the western watchtower!\u201d\u00a0 She looked at Dardeh. \u201cYou should come too.\u201d<\/p>\n I should come?\u00a0 Why\u2026?<\/em><\/p>\n Farengar\u2019s eyes lit up again.\u00a0 \u201cA dragon! How exciting! Where was it going? What was it doing?\u201d<\/p>\n She sighed.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019d take this a little more seriously if I were you.\u00a0 Come, we need to inform the Jarl at once!\u201d<\/p>\n Dardeh couldn\u2019t quite grasp all that was going on in the next moments.\u00a0 People were yelling, the Jarl was handing out instructions, Irileth was ordering him to follow her and Farengar nearly had to be physically restrained from joining what seemed to be a dragon-hunting party forming at the city gates.\u00a0 Dardeh was simply swept along in the tide of activity.\u00a0 Somehow, having been in the vicinity of a dragon\u2019s snout meant that he was an experienced dragon hunter, and they really wanted him with them.\u00a0 Well, I can\u2019t argue with that, he thought.\u00a0 I really do have more experience with the thing than almost anyone else alive, aside from Ralof and Ulfric and whoever else survived Helgen. I don’t know what good that’s going to do me in a fight, though. I saw<\/em> the dragon, not fought<\/em> it. As he listened to Irileth\u2019s rousing speech to her guards, urging them to action on behalf of all true Nords \u2013 a statement that Dardeh found amusing, given that she was Dunmer \u2013 he heard one of the guards whisper, \u201cWe\u2019re so dead.\u201d<\/p>\n Talos help us, but I hope you\u2019re wrong about that.<\/em><\/p>\n The western watchtower was ancient, to begin with, leaning at an odd angle, with portions of what once must have been a much larger structure half-buried in the ground. \u00a0It was also ablaze when they got there, any organic component in it fully engulfed, an echo of the horror that had been Helgen just days earlier.\u00a0 Dardeh half-listened to Irileth\u2019s orders while looking around, but paid more attention to the watchtower guards who cried out warnings.\u00a0 The dragon had already taken two of the men, they said.\u00a0 Dardeh found one of them, or what was left of him, still smoldering on the grass, his head elsewhere.<\/p>\n That could have been me, he thought, up in Helgen. If not the executioner, the dragon; either way I could have lost my head. How did I manage to survive?<\/p>\n \u201cGods preserve us. Here he comes again!\u201d the guard shouted.<\/p>\n The familiar hollow roar came from the west, through a pass in the nearby hills, and the tiny speck quickly became wings, and then the huge wings of a dragon. Too fast! Dardeh thought.\u00a0 We\u2019ll never be able to hit him, he\u2019s too fast!<\/p>\n Everyone there drew bows and began peppering the sky with arrows as the dragon shrieked the same fire words Dardeh had heard in Helgen.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t the same dragon; it wasn\u2019t black, it was a golden color that he might have considered beautiful if it hadn\u2019t been trying to destroy them all.\u00a0 It flew over them, almost lazily, spewing fire, clearly exulting in its own superiority, taunting them, calling out in words Dardeh could hear but could not understand aside from their smug tone. \u00a0It was as Dardeh had feared; the thing was flying too fast for him to get a good shot at it; he barely could follow its movements with his eyes, much less with a drawn bow. \u00a0As it had been in Helgen, the sound was deafening, confusing, terrifying.<\/p>\n The beast landed with an enormous crash, shaking the ground and throwing everyone off-balance. Dardeh aimed and moved forward, trying to time his shots; a couple of them were solid hits but the dragon was so huge that his iron arrows did little damage. Two of the guards rushed forward, swords drawn; the dragon reached out his head and grabbed one of them, picking him up and shaking him back and forth.\u00a0 The man screamed, but only for a moment before the dragon bit him in two and spat out the pieces.<\/p>\n Dardeh saw red.<\/p>\n He drew his swords and sprinted hard, around the back side of the dragon, roaring the battle cry he\u2019d learned to summon from his very depths, and he unleashed strikes on the beast as fast as he could.\u00a0 As the dragon looked around to see where his attacker was, Irileth cast shock spells on it and the guards continued to fire arrows.\u00a0 One of them drew his swords and began hammering blows on the opposite side of the dragon from Dardeh.<\/p>\n Dardeh\u2019s arms were beginning to ache as he struck, again and again, the guard\u2019s dying screams echoing in his head.\u00a0 \u201cDie!\u201d he bellowed.\u00a0 \u201cDie, you monstrous thing! Leave these people alone!\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, one of his scimitars struck so deep that he couldn\u2019t pull it out again.\u00a0 The dragon threw its head up and back, and roared.<\/p>\n Dardeh heard \u201cDovahkiin? Nooo!\u201d<\/p>\n The dragon crashed to earth, dead.\u00a0 Dardeh grabbed his scimitar with both hands, planted one foot on the side of the dragon, and pulled as hard as he could; it came loose, and he fell onto his backside beside the corpse.<\/p>\n Then he scrambled to his feet and backed away as fast as he could.\u00a0 The body was beginning to burn.<\/p>\n \u201cGet back!\u00a0 Stand clear of it!\u201d he heard Irileth shout.<\/p>\n But he couldn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n The body was burning, crackling, and a strange light was swirling up and around it, reaching toward Dardeh.\u00a0 He stood, transfixed, watching it.\u00a0 Then, just as the blue light in Bleak Falls Barrow had done, the light entered<\/em> him, somehow, with a booming sound that he wasn\u2019t certain anyone else could hear. It washed over him, and flowed into him, filling him with a sense of life, of power, and of knowledge.\u00a0 He shivered and burned and closed his eyes and wanted to cry out in fear, except that he wasn\u2019t afraid, he was simply\u2026 in awe, and he didn\u2019t know what was happening to him except that somehow he was \u2026 more<\/em> \u2026 than he had been just a moment earlier.<\/p>\n Finally the light subsided, the sound quieted; and when he opened his eyes Dardeh found that he was standing beside the skeleton of the dragon, its flesh having been burned entirely away from its bones.\u00a0 He rubbed his eyes and shook his head and looked around at the guards and Irileth, all staring at him in disbelief.<\/p>\n \u201cDragonborn!\u201d\u00a0 One of the guards breathed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d\u00a0 Dardeh stared at him.\u00a0 You can\u2019t mean this.<\/em><\/p>\n Dardeh knew what it meant.\u00a0 His mother had taught him all the old stories.\u00a0 He had heard the tales of those born with the dragon blood; of the lineage, some said, of Tiber Septim himself \u2013 Talos as he had been when he was a human. The Dragonborn could slay dragons and steal their souls.\u00a0 The Dragonborn could speak in the language of dragons without being trained for years, the way the Graybeards in High Hrothgar had been.<\/p>\n \u201cTry to Shout!\u201d the same guard urged him.<\/p>\n Dardeh began to shudder.<\/p>\n Try to Shout?<\/p>\n And somewhere, from deep within him, the word he had learned in Bleak Falls Barrow mixed with what he already knew how to do, that deep, dark battle cry that had seen him through so many fights, and with the power he had taken from the dragon; and he leaned forward toward the dragon\u2019s skeleton and roared, the power flowing up and through him, out toward the sunlight.<\/p>\n \u201cFUS!\u201d<\/p>\n Dust flew.\u00a0 The enormous skeleton moved back five, ten feet.<\/p>\n \u201cA Shout! That must have been it!\u00a0 You really are Dragonborn!\u201d<\/p>\n Dardeh heard the chattering voices behind him.\u00a0 He knew, with part of his mind, that they were talking about him, arguing about whether the Dragonborn was a reality or just a tale, whether it even mattered since he clearly could kill a dragon, and as usual the slurs and defensiveness surrounding Nord traditions.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 All he knew was that somewhere, deep inside him, Fus was a part of him now.\u00a0 He just stared at the skeleton.<\/p>\n Then he closed his eyes and prayed once more.\u00a0 Talos guide me.<\/em> Please.<\/em> I don\u2019t know what to do.<\/em><\/p>\n He was a Nord who had killed a dragon with his Redguard father\u2019s swords, and who had done a thing nobody had done since the last Age.<\/p>\n He started up the road to Whiterun, silent, leaving the arguing guards behind.<\/p>\n Dardeh shifted his pack on his shoulders for what felt like the hundredth time since he\u2019d left Riverwood, and began climbing the steps toward the heights of Whiterun.\u00a0 This gods-forsaken stone was one of the most awkwardly heavy things he\u2019d ever tried to carry, and he\u2019d lifted a lot of stone in his day.\u00a0 He\u2019d … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/baakay.com\/FanFic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2-1-6-3.png\")
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