Two days passed before Chip made it to Whiterun again. He’d been completely exhausted by the time he’d reached his home. The problem, of course, was that he was a werewolf. Even on these, the darkest of nights with no moons showing in the sky, he couldn’t get a full, restful sleep. He tossed and turned, his mind fighting battles so vague that he didn’t know what they were against; and when he woke, he spent the first hour yawning.
It’s never been any different. I’ve never been able to sleep well.
He’d taken the carriage from Riften to Whiterun, dozing in the warm sun for much of the trip to the repetitive sounds of the horse’s hooves and the gentle bump-bumping of the cart along the old roadways. He’d come to the city specifically, rather than cutting across-country, in order to trade. His practice with alchemy had left him with an abundance of weak potions and poisons, as well as a few odd but very powerful mixtures that he hoped he could turn to cash. His efforts had been well rewarded, and the price of the ring he’d purchased from Majni on Solstheim no longer stung as badly.
By the time Chip finished his business and enjoyed a quiet, pleasant meal at the Bannered Mare, it had once again turned to night and the call of the hunt was beginning to pull at him. He wasted no time getting outside the city walls; for while the moons were still nearly obscured he didn’t trust himself not to turn, and the last thing he wanted was to have the entire Whiterun guard chasing him down.
His next three targets were a bear, a saber cat, and a mammoth. Froki had marked his map in a broad circle around the city of Whiterun, and he’d considered that particular marker carefully. He knew that north of Whiterun, there was a large pit – a mammoth’s graveyard, so to speak, where mammoths went to die naturally and where poachers waited to kill them if they weren’t dead quickly enough. It seemed logical and likely to him that of his three targets, the guardian mammoth might be in or nearby to that pit. If not there, then he might find the guardian across the road that ran north toward Heljarchen, another place mammoths frequented.
It was truly dark as he moved through the tall grasses just to the west of Whiterun’s old northern watchtower toward the pit. It was also truly silent; the only sounds he heard were those of the breezes moving through the grass – at least until he had passed the watchtower and neared the northernmost border of Whiterun Hold. He was just about to drop over the lip of the pit when a wolf howled. Chip stopped and looked around, grinning to himself.
They know their kind. They’ve taken to telling me when I’m nearing a target. I wish I had a good way to tell them thank you.
Moving farther up the slope that marked the southern edge of the pit, he could see the glow of a giants’ camp off in the distance. But there were no signs of life aside from that: no scents or sounds to be heard no matter how he swiveled his head or strained; and he certainly saw nothing aside from that glow in the mid distance.
Hmm. Where are you? Was I wrong?
He took a few more steps north, across a rocky space where the passage of massive limbs had trodden down any grasses that might have been brave enough to try sprouting there. Another wolf howled.
Alright. I’m going the right way.
He reached the edge of the pit, a fact that registered primarily because there were torchbugs flickering around the rocks well beneath the level of his feet. Then he jumped, as a gargantuan, glowing specter appeared from the nothingness and turned to face him. He swallowed hard. Mammoths presented a very dangerous challenge under ideal conditions. This was not ideal, not in any way at all. But he was here to prove himself as a hunter. This was no time to second-guess the situation.
Chip took a couple of careful steps back from the edge of the pit, out of the potential reach of the creature’s long snout, and fired. The arrow struck the mammoth’s broad forehead; it bellowed but gave no real sign of being injured. Chip shot again, then a third and a fourth time; the mammoth threw up its trunk and roared again. Then it did the thing Chip had hoped most it would not do: it began moving up the sloped side of the pit, clearly intending to attack him.
Chip had buried seven arrows into the beast by the time it found its way up and started chasing him. There was a remarkable and terrifying truth about mammoths: they were huge and cumbersome, but they could outstrip most other animals for speed in a charge. That frightening sound of the rapid approach of an enormous mammoth was what Chip had least wanted to hear. He scrambled backward, his heart pounding, and dropped down over the rocks to where the mammoth had been just as the mammoth reached the place he’d originally fired from. It bellowed at him once more, in obvious frustration, as he shot two more arrows into it.
He said a silent thanks once more to his armor; its black and grey blended with the blacks and greys of rocky terrain even in the brightest sunlight. In the pitch dark of this night, he must have completely disappeared; for the mammoth turned this way and that, looking for him. He waited until its head swung around to face him and fired again.
Much to his surprise, the specter dissolved, as the others had, into a pile of glowing dust. Chip stood quietly, breathing deeply to calm his heart. He hadn’t expected it to go down so easily. Eight arrows were still at least four times more than he usually needed to drop a beast, but this was a mammoth. He’d only hunted mammoth once or twice before, and they’d been living creatures not as large as this spirit animal.
He approached the pile of ectoplasm cautiously and took from it those arrows he could salvage. Cautiously, because in all of the other locations there had been living iterations of the spirit animal waiting to add their own attacks to the challenge. He hadn’t battled the wolves, of course; but there had been a number of mudcrabs to kill and at least two beefy skeevers lying in wait in the ruin. He really had expected a second mammoth to deal with. But after waiting for several long, silent minutes and listening carefully, he neither heard nor saw anything else waiting for him.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he rearranged his quiver and started back toward the south at a slow, ground-covering trot. The next area he needed to visit was in the far southwestern corner of Falkreath’s pine forest. He smiled as a wolf howled in response to his passage. He would make as many kills as he could on the way across Whiterun’s rich grasslands and into Falkreath’s abundant forests.
Chip thought about how many times recently he’d passed through this part of the world, and shook his head. He should have spent a great deal more time here, it seemed to him, as the deer and elk were absolutely everywhere. If he hadn’t been completely against slaying wolves he’d have been unable to move for the weight of the pelts he might have taken just making his way down into the southern parts of the forest. As it was, he had quite a bounty to share with Hircine once he got back to his home.
Everything smelled wonderful in the sunlight; the scent of fresh water near Lake Ilinalta gave way to the mustier, greener scents of pines, grasses, damp earth and herbs that released their fragrances underfoot as he passed. It was truly beautiful. He still preferred the aspens and maples of his home in the Rift, but this forest was a gift to the senses, with so many shades of green that his eyes struggled to capture them all, and a riot of sounds: trees whispering, rabbits and ground-dwelling birds moving through the grasses, partridges thumping at his passage and elk, deer and wolves calling out to their kind.
He was hopping up onto one of the many flat outcroppings of earth when a different sort of sound and scent set his personal alarms off. It was the sound nobody in a woodland ever wanted to hear – the crackling of fire – and the scents of burned wood and burned flesh. He drew his bow and dropped instantly into a crouch, creeping forward to see what was ahead of him.
There, on a packed earth trail running into the valley beyond, were the remains of a wagon. One of its two wooden tongues was broken in half but not in two, the front portion hanging down at a crazy angle. He could see from his vantage point that one wheel was completely off, but he couldn’t tell where it had ended its trip away from the carriage. There were flames licking at the wood, and embers trying to set new blazes in the organic materials left underfoot. More troubling than the broken-down wagon, though, were the dead bodies around it. The team of matched dun mares was lying dead, not far from where they had broken away from their yokes. Most disturbing was the pair of human corpses, burned to cinders where they’d crouched for protection.
Chip wrinkled his nose at the carnage. It was going to take some time to get the smell of burnt meat out of his head. He saw nothing around that would indicate what had happened to this doomed expedition, but he could hazard a guess. It had to have been a dragon attack, and a recent one, to so thoroughly burn the people and leave flames licking along the ground itself. He stared up into the skies, once more wishing his vision was as keen as his other senses. He smelled only burned wood and flesh. He heard nothing more than the quiet crackling of the fire and the birds and elk off in the distance.
If it was a dragon, the thing is gone now. Maybe it flew toward the lake and Uncle Dardeh got it. I can only hope.
He started down the path again and then turned back at the sounds of howling. Two wolves had come out of the undergrowth to stand over the corpses of the deceased and mark their passing. He dipped his head to his brothers and then continued on his way.
He followed the pathway deeper into the woods, far enough that his sense of smell returned to him and he once again could hear chickadees and robins twittering away to each other. Ahead of him, the path took a sharp right turn around some rocks. When he rounded the corner he inhaled in surprise. There was some sort of monument there, at the base of the mountains, with short standing stones along the edge of a babbling brook. He could see a burning brazier just beyond the stones. A grey fox ran in front of him, and out of instinct he drew his bow to hunt it. It led him to a place where iron doors embedded into the side of the mountain guarded the entrance to a cave or shrine.
His arrow buried itself into the fox, nose-first. For a moment he felt bad about having killed it; but the bow warmed in his hand, and he took a moment to acknowledge Hircine’s influence. This fox was not the guardian bear he sought, but it was a kill, and its lovely grey pelt would make a worthy sacrifice to his lord.
He considered trying the doors of the cave. But something about them put him off. There was a power there, some sort of influence that was familiar somehow but was not his to explore. When a shudder ran up his back involuntarily, he turned back down the trail. He was close to the bear, he could feel it.
He returned to the large boulder he’d passed a few minutes earlier and stopped to look and listen, and taste the air. Up. Up and to his left; that was where he sensed his prey. He moved farther along the path and found a low spot in the embankment, a place where he was able to climb. There was an old pedestal here, one of the ancient animal totem markers one still found near many of the old barrows. This one undoubtedly marked whatever sepulcher was behind the iron doors below. He passed it, and rounded the rocks before which it stood, climbing as he went. The feeling that he was moving in the right direction increased.
The sepulcher and its totem had been in and around a ridge, it seemed. He’d come almost completely around the large rocky hilltop under which it burrowed and found himself dropping down onto a small, barely discernable path – an animal trail, really – that led to a flat area directly behind and above the place he’d killed the gray fox. He pulled his bow around in front of himself and paused for a deep breath. Whether it was a bear he was facing here or a saber cat he wasn’t certain; but he was quite frankly afraid of either choice. Both bears and cats could move at a ferocious pace, overwhelming even a man in heavy plate armor in only a few moments. He wore light leather armor – good armor, but no match for the kind of sharp claws they could wield. He’d long since learned to keep a healthy distance between himself and either of these predators and to take them on only if absolutely necessary, and only from above.
I suppose this means it truly is a test of a hunter. I’m afraid of them, and somehow I need to overcome that fear.
He surveyed the tabletop area he’d climbed to and elected to stay to its outside edge, atop the rocks where he could see his footing clearly. It was a long and potentially fatal fall if he were to be pushed off that edge; but it was at least a risk he could see. He had no idea what hidden roots or branches might exist in the treed areas, to trip him up if he needed to run. He reached the top of the rise and moved in, toward the center of the clearing, and had only enough time to register the fact that it was indeed the top of the monument he could see in front of him before a flash of blue light and a familiar growl told him that he had found the guardian bear.
He ran.
He was terrified of the bear, and he ran. Bears were unpredictable, and angry, and far stronger than he was, and this one was larger than a normal bear in the same way the guardian skeever had been larger than a normal skeever. He wanted to avoid getting near it for the same reasons he’d wanted to stay clear of the werebears. He ran, and he looked for a place to jump higher up onto the mountainside; but the bear snapped at his heels and he felt claws rake across his calf, just once. Frantic, he turned back toward the outside of the hill, his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that for a moment he feared he was about to turn again. He ran along the edge and looked to his left, and stopped, staring in astonishment.
What he’d feared for himself had come to pass for the guardian bear. It had tangled itself, somehow, in something on the ground and could not, at least for the moment, free itself. It roared in frustration and struggled to move but did not change position. Chip settled himself, picked up his bow, and moved to his right, to a place where he could reach the bear with an arrow but still hide if he needed to.
His first shot hit the bear, which roared. The next two shots missed.
Damn it! Calm down! You’re better than this!
It took nine more arrows to kill the bear, which never managed to free itself from whatever obstacle or force held it there next to the rocks. Chip swore as it finally disintegrated, and stomped across the grassy knoll to collect what arrows he could. To his surprise, he found a faerie ring of white-cap mushrooms in the space between where he had been and where the bear had stopped. In the center was a bloody skull, a book entitled “Father of the Niben,” and a staff of some kind that he took but did not attempt to use or analyze. He found the remains of the bear, took the few arrows from it, and turned toward the north, grinding his teeth in frustration.
Yes, I killed your guardian bear. But it took me ten arrows to best it, and two more shots missed. And worst of all, I was afraid.
I’m still not good enough. It doesn’t matter what I do; I’m not quite good enough.
Chip stretched once he finally jumped down from the carriage’s hard seat, and looked around at the remains of the old city of Winterhold. It was not much more than a collection of buildings surrounded by ruins at this point. The Archmage, Kalaman Jorus, had embarked on a vigorous restoration and expansion project at the College of Winterhold, but neither his energy nor that of Queen Frina of Windhelm seemed to have rubbed off on Winterhold’s Jarl or its small population. The ruins had been there for most of a century, unattended, as though the Jarl left them there as a reminder of his personal hatred for the College. Chip really couldn’t blame the Whiterun carriage driver for charging more than double his usual price for a ride there; it was tough going in miserable conditions with only a single, rundown inn at the end of that particular journey. Still, this was where Chip had needed to come, and as tired as he was after trudging back to Whiterun, he’d been quite willing to pay the man’s price.
“So,” he murmured to himself, reaching for his map, “where do you suppose I need to…”
A sound – very faint, but very distinctive – caught his attention and cut off his train of thought. He turned this way and that, trying to pinpoint its source and succeeding only in convincing himself that he must have heard the wind. Just to be safe, though, he readied his bow. He trotted a few yards east on the road out of town and then froze, scanning the skies as he heard the sound once more – a huge, hollow bellow that echoed off the stones, making it impossible to tell where its source was.
Another dragon? Where are they all coming from? I thought Uncle Dar had taken care of them!
He turned back toward the Jarl’s longhouse, scanning the mountainsides to his left as he ran. It was quiet – almost too quiet, for his hunter’s senses told him that there was prey, very large prey, very nearby.
“Hey, watch it!” a man yelped at him.
Chip turned to avoid crashing into the Nord walking down the street and jumped as a huge, dark shape glided silently over the roofs just in front of him. The dragon had flown out over the ocean while he’d been scanning the mountaintops; and it had thus managed to make its approach to take Chip by surprise. He fought down a surge of panic and readied his bow.
This is big prey, too. But I can kill this one. I can see it; I know where it is, and I’m not fighting it alone. It will be fine.
The dragon turned, just above the bridge to the College, and strafed the city with its breath attack as it flew down the length of the street. It turned back, flying so closely over Chip that his hair flew and people walking down the street staggered; but it was moving so fast that he couldn’t get a shot at it.
“Fall to me, dragon!” one of the guards screamed as the beast made another pass over the city and arrows flew, clattering back to the ground uselessly.
Don’t shoot at it while it’s moving, man! You’re just wasting your ammunition! It’s too fast!
Chip watched in dismay as the dragon flew out over the ocean, and then over the College of Winterhold. It dropped out of sight, then. All he could think of was the fact that any mage he’d ever seen wore flimsy robes rather than armor. They wouldn’t stand a chance against a dragon. He ran for the base of the bridge but stopped as the stern-looking Altmer woman blocking progress across it scowled at him.
“Someone do something!” That was the Nord he’d nearly run into, screaming for help. And Chip wanted to help; but while he could hear the dragon’s roars and could see it circling the College’s towers, rising and then diving for a fresh attack, he was helpless to do anything about it. It was much too far away and moving much too quickly for any arrow he might fire to reach it. He fired once anyway in complete frustration, as the dragon moved out over the bridge once more.
The arrow, of course, didn’t even come close to striking the dragon; but it did attract the beast’s attention. It swooped down over Chip and then turned, hovering, to face him dead on. Chip took careful aim at the creature, his mind taking note of its color and the shape of its head, and noting that he could see the Shrine of Azura in the distance, perfectly framed by the curve of its wings. He cringed, paralyzed, knowing he was about to take the full brunt of a dragon’s breath attack.
The beast turned to its left and unloaded on the city guard whose arrow had gotten to it first. Its breath was purple, and delivered with a ghastly shriek that hurt Chip’s very sensitive ears. The guard must have been hurt; but he stood firm, firing arrow after arrow, never dropping his aim. Chip heard one of the guard’s shots strike the dragon solidly, and the sound seemed to shake him into motion. He finally loosed the arrow he’d been holding at the ready for so long that his arm burned. It missed; and he watched in frustration as the dragon once more flew seaward, landing heavily on the highest of the College’s towers.
I was too slow! What is wrong with me?
This time, at least, he could see his target. He climbed up a tall boulder for a clear vantage. As he had done at the towers near Froki’s home he aimed high above the dragon’s body and fired once, twice, and yet again. He could hear spells being fired from within the College grounds, but he could not tell whether they or his own arrows were having any effect on the creature.
He fired a fourth arrow. The dragon screamed in rage and rose from the tower, turning to fly straight down the length of the bridge toward the boulder on which Chip stood, his bow at the ready.
I will not hesitate, this time.
He waited until the dragon was squarely approaching him, presenting the largest possible target, and released his arrow. Simultaneously, the dragon roared.
Chip found himself enveloped in a shimmering, toxic, painful blast of purple energies that pulled his life force from him as the beast swooped overhead and past him. He screamed, partially in pain and partially in frustration; and then he roared in a blinding rage as he watched the dragon land atop the Jarl’s longhouse, bellowing its own superiority.
The next few minutes were a blur of screams, bowshots, the sizzle and snap of magic projectiles fired by the College’s gate guard, and the thunder and howl of the dragon landing, leaping back into the air, and breathing its attack at the town. In the end, it was one of the College mages, or perhaps a guard, who had the final blow. Chip watched the dragon land atop the roof of the tower; a moment later he saw it fling its head backward and then collapse, its tail dangling limply over the edge of the stones. Perhaps it had even been the Archmage who killed the thing. Chip couldn’t tell. All he knew was that the prey was dead and he had not taken it.
Not only did I not take it down, I barely landed a blow!
He turned back toward Winterhold, grimly making his way down the boulder. There was a large tree there, at the base of which someone had created a sort of memorial or grave marker with a sword wedged between two stones. The stone nearer to him had a shape that told of many hours with people sitting on it. To what – or to whom – the memorial was dedicated, he didn’t know; but the tree was old enough, and large enough, that whoever was buried here beneath it, surrounded by snowberry bushes, had to have died many years before.
He took a seat on the stone himself, and bowed his head, closed his eyes, and ran his hands down his face. He hadn’t felt so disgusted with himself in a long time. Not even being afraid of the spectral bear was as humiliating as was having frozen in fear when the dragon hovered in front of him.
“Don’t feel bad about it, lad,” a voice spoke. Chip opened his eyes to see the guard who had stood fearlessly in the dragon’s breath and kept firing. “You fought well.”
“I froze,” Chip growled. “I froze while you kept fighting.”
“Yes, but I’m an old man,” the guard said, “and I’ve fought in wars. You’re just a young whelp still. There’s no shame to be had in a moment of fear in the face of something that large and that dangerous.”
Chip sighed. Young whelp, is it? Young, and soft. That’s what everyone sees when they look at me.
“You weren’t afraid,” he said sullenly.
The man laughed. “And what makes you think that, young whelp? I was terrified. But I’ve watched Jarls and Emperors and dragons and even trolls trying to take this city all the way down, and I’m tired of it. I wasn’t going to let it fall if there was anything I could do about it. But don’t kid yourself. Anyone who says they aren’t afraid in the face of a dragon is lying to you.”
Chip smirked. “Even the Dragonborn?” I’ll bet Uncle Dar’s never been the least bit afraid of a dragon. Or Uncle Roggi, either.
The guard laughed. “Even the Dragonborn. I saw them fight a beast once, you know. They were both screaming and running just as fast as the rest of us. The only difference between them and us is that he has a special weapon we don’t have – his Voice.” The man sighed, and pointed up at the College. “And he makes cleaning up after them a lot easier. I don’t envy the folks who have to move that great stinking carcass now.”
He rubbed a shoulder and winced. “Ugh. Getting old.” He brushed some snow off the legs of his clothes and smiled at Chip. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, lad. I watched you stand there and face that attack head-on. You shot the beast in spite of it. Not many could say they would be that brave. You’re quite the hunter.” He gave Chip a nod and clumped down over the rocks to take up his patrol again.
Chip stared after him, watching him start down the short extent of Winterhold’s main street; and very slowly, a smile broke over his face. Maybe the man was right. Maybe having frozen for that few moments didn’t make him a failure after all. Especially if even his uncle the Dragonborn was afraid sometimes.
Then he frowned. He remembered how deep the circles under Dardeh’s eyes had been, and the sound of that nagging cough. Dardeh was supposed to have defeated the dragons.
Why are there so many dragons all of a sudden? What’s wrong with Uncle Dar?
Froki had marked a fairly large area of the shoreline and ice fields offshore on Chip’s map. But it was his hunter’s senses – or maybe Hircine’s bow – that drew him down the deep crevasse, onto the waterfront, and around the edge of an ice floe to the end of another crevasse. The sounds of animals fighting lured him into the opening, and he peered up the slope in time to see a horker drop into a pile of other horker corpses. From behind the pile emerged a glowing form.
Oh gods. Here’s the saber cat.
Like every other saber cat Chip had ever encountered, this one fixed its sights on him and accelerated. He reached for his staff, thinking to distract the cat by conjuring a wraith while he backed out of range. When he fired the staff, though, instead of the figure he’d expected, a wide patch of spikes rose from the ground before him. He’d grabbed the wrong staff – the one he’d found after killing the Guardian Bear.
The cat simply swerved around the spikes.
Chip fumbled for his bow and fired an arrow directly into the creature’s face, but the cat leaped at him and raked him with both front paws. He gasped in pain, and turned in a panic to run away. He expected the claws – or even worse, the teeth – in his back at any moment, and gasped as he threw himself into the narrow channel of frigid water at the shore’s edge. He forced himself across.
Just as he pulled himself out onto the far shore he heard a sound he hadn’t expected; the barking and howling of a wolf. Chip’s mouth fell open in astonishment for just a moment; then he looked at his quiver and realized that, once more, he’d fired one of Hircine’s arrows and the wolf attacking the cat was one he’d conjured himself. He shook himself into action and drew an arrow, making sure that this time it was steel.
His arrow flew straight and true, and pierced the cat in its side. It, like all the other guardian spirits before it had done, disintegrated into a pile of glowing dust. The wolf raised its muzzle and howled. Chip crossed the water again and approached it, marveling that once again Hircine had been right. The arrows he’d created at the altar had served him well.
“Thank you, my brother,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I could have survived that without your help.”
The wolf howled again as if he helped rescue wayward hunters every day, and then noisily disappeared in the same way it had manifested. Chip heaved a heavy sigh and adjusted his gear, starting a slow trudge down the shoreline to the east.
I’ve done it. I’ve slain all of Froki’s guardian animals. Time to go talk to him again.
Too bad I feel like a failure.