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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Dagnell\u2019s eyes fluttered open to a brilliant blue sky and blazing sun that made her eyes water. She groaned.\u00a0 Her head was pounding, especially in the back where the blow had landed. Reaching to test the spot gingerly, she found the hair matted, sticky.\u00a0 Her hand came away bloody, but it was thick blood, and well congealed.\u00a0 Good, she thought. I’m not still bleeding.\u00a0 Every part of her hurt, though; she\u2019d hit the ground hard when she fell, she was scraped and bruised in a dozen places, and she was going to have a miserable headache for some time.\u00a0 She pushed herself up to a sitting position, slowly, wincing.\u00a0 Ugh.<\/em><\/p>\n The raid hadn\u2019t been a complete surprise; they\u2019d heard it coming. But there were only two of them, and the raiders had been many more than two. J\u2019hall had put up the fight of his life; several of the raiders would be wearing the marks of his claws for the rest of theirs, but in the end he\u2019d come up short. She\u2019d also done her best, taking down several of the bandits at the outset.\u00a0 Maybe the long days of riding in J\u2019hall\u2019s cart had stiffened her muscles, though, slowed her reflexes a bit, she wasn\u2019t sure; but one of them had managed to get behind and flatten her. It was fortunate that he\u2019d assumed she was dead and not double-checked to make sure the job was done.\u00a0 She stretched her neck, wincing again, and then looked down at herself and growled.<\/p>\n \u201cOblivion take the lot of you.\u201d<\/p>\n Dagnell was sitting in the middle of the worn cobblestone road in her light tunic and not a shred of clothing else aside from her basic foot wrappings. They, along with her feet, had<\/em> been in a pair of supple, well fitting boots. Her leathers were gone \u2013 the ones she had worn for so long that she knew the name of every scratch and mark on them.\u00a0 She sighed.\u00a0 It was just leather armor but it \u2013 and the coin purse and one or two healing potions tucked into it \u2013 was all she\u2019d had in the world.<\/p>\n Those, and the pair of deadly sharp Redguard scimitars that had served her well for so many years.\u00a0 She\u2019d acquired them on the island of Stros M\u2019Kai as a girl, when a different bandit raid had taken her parents and all of their modest wealth.\u00a0 The blades had gone flying when one of the raiders had ineptly stepped into a brother\u2019s path, and she had retrieved them once she\u2019d crawled out from her hiding place. She regretted their loss even more than the loss of her coin purse. Coin was easy to come by if you knew how.<\/p>\n It stank.\u00a0 The air carried the unpleasant aroma of bird eggs laid too long past and then broken open. She was used to the fresh, salty tang of the sea, not the greenish-yellow, bubbling, steaming pools among which the roadway snaked.\u00a0 The ground was hard-packed and yellow, with only the barest of ground cover here and there.<\/p>\n It was not a pleasant place to awaken with nothing to your name.<\/p>\n For a moment she wondered what had possessed her to think herself tired of life on the docks of Stros M\u2019Kai. \u201cWell you wanted to see the rest of Tamriel,\u201d she muttered. \u201cAnd so you are.\u201d<\/p>\n There was deep, constant rumble here, as though the earth itself was complaining.\u00a0 Above that sound, though, were regular, heavy thuds that she could feel as well as hear. The source of these was anything but difficult to find. A giant \u2013 a, grubby, bearded behemoth carrying an enormous club — lumbered with his two mammoths about a huge bonfire, just a wee bit shy of entirely too close for comfort.\u00a0 Giants were supposed to be peaceful as long as you left their mammoths alone, but she wasn\u2019t keen on testing that theory. It was time to get moving.<\/p>\n The Khajiit trader\u2019s cart in which she\u2019d been riding lay tipped on its side, the barrels and crates of goods it had carried strewn onto the ground.\u00a0 Opened and looted, it would seem, aside from some unfortunate cabbages that had rolled onto the dirt and were shrinking away from the blazing sun.\u00a0 The air wasn\u2019t hot here, no, not anywhere in Skyrim that she had been, but that sun could be like the inside of a baker\u2019s oven when it wasn\u2019t raining. Or snowing. An involuntary shudder rippled from her core as she imagined what it would be like in a Skyrim snow with what she was currently wearing or, rather, not wearing.<\/p>\n Dagnell stood up stiffly and surveyed the damage.<\/p>\n \u201cDamn.\u201d<\/p>\n J\u2019hall\u2019s head was a ruin, his arms spread awkwardly out to either side in a pool of his own blood, his beautiful tail in tatters. They\u2019d met in Dragonstar, near the northern border of Hammerfell and Skyrim. He was heading through the province of Skryim, east to Morrowind and then southwest again to Cyrodiil. \u201cThis one has been riding alone,\u201d he had told her, \u201cbut would be happy to travel with the pretty one with sharp swords,\u201d as some insurance against the civil war that had raiders all over the roads. She\u2019d pulled her weight; she was good with a bow and had some small talent for sweeping a stray coin from the table here and there.\u00a0 He\u2019d told her tales of his journeys, in that odd but comfortable Khajiit cadence, and he\u2019d listened to her complain about Skyrim\u2019s weather in good humor.<\/p>\n Dag had grown up hearing that dark colors helped warm a person. She had dark Redguard skin and dark brown shoulder-length hair, but it wasn\u2019t helping her much here and she hated being cold. \u201cThis one also prefers warm sands,\u201d he had told her with a Khajiit\u2019s fang-laced smile. \u201cYou should come to Stros M\u2019Kai with me,\u201d she\u2019d replied. \u201cThe sands are red \u2013 and hot.\u201d Cyrodill was not sandy, he told her, but the southern parts of it were much warmer than Skyrim.\u00a0 It had seemed as good a place to go as any.<\/p>\n She was sad that he was gone, and regretted that there was nothing with which she could give him a decent burial. Even if she managed to wrestle a board from the wreckage of the cart, the ground was too hard-packed to dig. There was nearly nothing left of any sort, tool or otherwise; the horse was long gone, the wagon’s wheels broken.<\/p>\n What was<\/em> left was on his corpse.\u00a0 He\u2019d been wearing some leather armor and hide boots; the armor was stiff with blood and not remotely a good fit for her, but it would serve until something better came to hand. Untwining her foot wraps and stuffing them into the toes of his boots would help them at least stay on her feet, though blisters were going to be inevitable; still, it would be better than shredding her soles on the bare ground. At least she wouldn\u2019t be facing a trek to nowhere in particular in just her tunic.<\/p>\n Under J\u2019hall was a steel warhammer, of good steel at that.\u00a0 Dagnell sighed. She hated using two-handed weapons.\u00a0 She could swing one well enough, but at her size she could only swing it a few times before fatigue set in and accuracy vanished.\u00a0 It was something, though, and she would gratefully take it.\u00a0 In the bottom of one of the barrels she found several apples that were neither rotten nor too overly dried.\u00a0 They would do, as well.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you, my friend,\u201d she murmured to the dead Khajiit. \u201cI hope that your road has led you to those warm sands.\u201d<\/p>\n Which way to go? J\u2019hall had spoken of the cities here in the eastern part of Skyrim, though she had no idea how far away she was from any one of them.\u00a0 Whichever she came to first would have to be good enough, and would certainly be better than where she was. Shouldering the warhammer with a sigh, she started trudging up the road, hoping that her head would stop throbbing soon. It was going to be a long walk to whatever was next, as there was nothing aside from the giant\u2019s bonfire to be seen anywhere.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before she heard the first howls. Wolves seemed to be simply everywhere in Skyrim, and they were a nuisance as well as a danger.\u00a0 She and J\u2019hall had picked off dozens of the gods-damned things along the roads.\u00a0 Now she was facing a pair of them with an unfamiliar weapon and ill-fitting clothing, and was not happy about it.\u00a0 The first wolf went down easily with a hammer blow to the head, but the second kept circling her, snarling, nipping at her legs, drawing blood, forcing her to cry out. She hadn\u2019t recovered from the raider attack; she had no spare strength with which to swing the hammer again more than once, a wide swing that missed the wolf\u2019s head but struck him in the hindquarters.\u00a0 Her only hope was that her barest-of-minimum training in flame magic might save her hide. She mustered her will, hoping against hope that the fire from her left hand would be enough.<\/p>\n \u201cDie, you miserable son of a horker!\u201d she screamed. The wolf yelped and burned, enough wounded from the hammer blow that it couldn\u2019t get out of the flame\u2019s path, and it dropped.<\/p>\n She was drenched in sweat, panting. It took her longer than a comfortable amount of time to generate the little bit of healing magic she knew, to stop the bleeding in her legs.\u00a0 Good, she sighed, examining the damage.\u00a0 More scars to add to the collection whose premier specimen was the long pale trail down her left cheek.\u00a0 That had been a fool\u2019s errand, for certain.\u00a0 For reasons she still didn\u2019t quite understand all these years later she\u2019d tried to take some small revenge for her parents\u2019 deaths on a solitary bandit. It was fortunate that he\u2019d been enjoying a drink that slowed him down a bit. She\u2019d barely escaped a bad end by virtue of his ale and her own fast legs, but not before the tip of his scimitar had caught her cheek. Now, whenever she was inclined to hasty action, she just had to look at her own reflection.<\/p>\n She stared at the dead wolves and again regretted the loss of her blades.\u00a0 Pelts were always good for something, tanning for leather or selling if nothing else. She needed to take these, and a warhammer wasn\u2019t going to do the job.\u00a0 A few minutes of searching gave her a rock sharp enough, once she worked it a bit against another, to make a basic cut — not even as sharp as a flint knife by any stretch, but it would have to do.\u00a0 It was a rude skinning at best and the edges of the pelts were ragged by the time she got done, but a bit of decent leather might possibly be had of them in the end.\u00a0 She left the meat.\u00a0 These things sometimes carried the rockjoint disease and she had no way to counter it if she got sick.<\/p>\n As she resumed her trudge along the cobbles, she thought to collect some of the unfamiliar, low-growing berries and bright yellow flowers alongside the road.\u00a0 Alchemists were always looking for fresh ingredients. If she was fortunate, she might sell them for enough coin to buy a flagon of warm mead or a bit of bread. If nothing else, she could learn what they were when she made it to civilization.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/baakay.com\/FanFic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/1-1-1-2.png\")
<\/p>\nPart I: Survivors<\/a><\/div>\n