The entrance to the bridge hugging the ravine’s north side was barred by a metal gate. Harald grimaced as he approached it, wondering whether he would now need to demonstrate his lock picking skills – or lack of same – to Ulkarin. Happily, though, and to his complete surprise, the door swung open without complaint.
“Someone’s oiled this, recently I think,” he told Ulkarin. “Didn’t you say this mine was abandoned?”
Ulkarin shook his head. “What I said was that I imagined not much mining was going on after the flooding.”
“Oh. Of course. In that case I think we’ll want to be extra careful going in. I have a feeling that our ‘friend’ is still holed up down here somewhere. Otherwise this gate would have rusted, what with all this moisture.”
“Lead on, then.”
Harald readied his sword, dropped down into a crouch that would afford him what little measure of stealth he could manage, and stepped through the gate. His first impression was that this walkway seemed none too solid; on the other hand, there was a half-wall – a guardrail of sorts – along its outside edge.
At least if I lose my footing to dampness or moss I won’t be automatically doomed.
The walkway curved right and then left, out of sight around the mountainside. Harald felt a bit uneasy to be proceeding blind, but from above he hadn’t seen anything that looked like a break or collapse in the walkway. He raised his shield a little higher, spikes at the ready, and continued on.
Just around the rock outcropping he saw that his caution was well-warranted. Mists rose up from below, saturating the wood and affording vines and moss an outstanding opportunity to grow. Not only could a person get tangled up in the vines, but portions of the walkway had suffered damage at some point. The external rails had been broken off, probably by rock falls, and the structure itself hung from the ravine walls at odd angles.
I’d pray for safety right now but I’m almost afraid to shift my weight to take to my knees. Who knows how solid this thing is?
The sounds of wind blowing through the ravine and heavy timbers creaking beneath them masked the shuffling of approaching feet until it was almost too late. Harald had been peering down between the platform’s boards, wondering what the chances of survival would be in a ravine this deep, when motion above and ahead of him caught his attention and he jerked his head back up, startled. A corpse with a war axe was bearing down on him.
“There you are!” Ulkarin said from behind him.
The corpse’s first blow caught Harald slightly off-guard; even though he had his shield up the axe caught it awkwardly and his arm rang from the shock of the impact. His sword, however, landed solidly once, twice, staggering the creature each time. Harald heard Ulkarin’s axe slicing the air just to his right, but it was a long reach even for such a large man, and the axe didn’t connect. It didn’t matter, though; Harald landed one more blow which pushed the corpse over one of the unguarded sections of the walkway. It plummeted to the bottom of the ravine.
“Guess I’d better pay more attention,” Harald said, wincing as he rotated his left shoulder. “That’s going to ache later on.”
“Let’s get around this corner,” Ulkarin said. “It’s really close quarters for me and I don’t like the way the wind’s blowing.”
It was true, too: in this area the walkway was tucked almost completely under a large overhang – not too bad for Harald, but Ulkarin’s head would likely brush the undersurface of the stone unless he walked perilously close to the outside edge. There was a tattered banner affixed to the outer support here, and it was whipping in the breeze. The only thing working to their advantage was the fact that it wasn’t raining. At least their chances of sliding off the edge were lessened.
Just past the overhang the walkway hung precariously on either side of another outcropping, this one beneath their feet. Some of the wooden planks had broken loose, including the guardrails. The supports sagged outward alarmingly, and the guardrail looked as though any pressure on it would send it down into the ravine. Harald was hurrying to get onto the rock – if nothing else the mountainside wasn’t likely to fall – when in fact some of it did. He screeched to a halt at a grinding sound, narrowly missing three large boulders that fell from above, crashed through the gap in the broken guardrail and further loosened one of the other nearly-collapsed sections. No wonder the walkway seemed so dangerous. It was.
“The floods must have loosened the rocks,” he said quietly. “Let’s get this over with quickly before the whole thing comes down.”
“It’s been going on for awhile by the looks,” Ulkarin agreed, pointing ahead. Wooden walls had been placed on the inside as well as the outside in several spots where rockslides might be most likely. Beyond them, the platform dipped downward, took several very sharp turns, and then rose to meet a suspended bridge spanning a deep, narrow cut in the mountainside. The angles of the path made it easy to spot the walking corpse waiting for them there just before the bridge.
Harald rushed to meet the creature head on. It saw him coming and raised its sword to hammer down on Harald’s shield; this time, though, Harald was ready and neatly blocked the blow, following with a pair of sword strikes of his own. On the second – his backswing, really – he moved slightly to the right as he always did. He stepped backward. Suddenly, half his foot wasn’t on a solid surface. A bolt of sheer panic struck him like one of the boulders he’d just dodged: he was near to stepping out into the void left by a section of missing guard wall. The sudden shock had him raining blows down on the corpse like a madman. Without knowing how he’d done it he circled around the corpse to the inside, and nearly stepped into a hole where he hadn’t expected one, on the inside edge of the boardwalk. He took down the undead man just in time to regain his balance and grab a panting breath or two.
Shuffling footsteps behind him and the whoosh of an arrow flying by had him whirling around to face another zombie. It had apparently been across the suspended bridge near the mine entrance, but now it was determined to push Harald off the edge into the ravine. Harald, though, was still fully in the grip of the fury that near-death had inspired, and he blocked, bashed, and pierced without thought other than “kill it.” In the end, Ulkarin sent an arrow through the corpse’s head just as Harald bashed it with his deadly spikes, and it fell.
Ulkarin came up beside him as he gasped to get air and calm the unexpected shock-induced rage that had boiled up. “Sorry about being not as good with the bow,” Ulkarin said, grinning broadly.
“Yes, well,” Harald said between pants, “these quarters are too close for that axe. I almost fell off a couple of times myself, and I’ve just got a sword.” He straightened up and grinned back at Ulkarin. “Thanks for that last arrow. Sometimes I get going and it just saps my strength. I don’t know how much longer I would have had the energy to fight that thing.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen that kind of thing before,” Ulkarin said. “You didn’t tell me you were a berserker.”
Harald blinked, stunned. ‘And a bit of a berserker you are, too, highborn or not.’ That’s what Loke told me. That’s two in a row. What in the world is this, anyway?
“I never thought I was,” he told Ulkarin, hoping he looked unconcerned. “I just take after my father, I guess. He was something of a warrior in his younger days.”
“So’s his son, from the looks of it. Now let’s get going before this platform decides it can’t hold a couple of big men with heavy armor.”
“Right.”
He trotted up the ramp and across the gently-swaying suspended bridge, trying not to shudder at the finality of the depths over which they crossed. Fortunately, it was a short span and they arrived at the mine’s doorway in moments. Inside, a ramp led down to a metal gate beyond which he saw a lantern atop a table. He pushed open the gate, dropped into a crouch, and eased himself into the room. Behind him, Ulkarin made a distressed noise.
“The stench!” Ulkarin whispered. “It’s worse in here than it was outside!”
Harald smirked, happy that Ulkarin couldn’t see his face. It did smell bad inside; the almost-overpowering reek of death was concentrated inside the mountain. But an odor was the least of their worries, as far as he was concerned.
Not far from the entrance, a platform to their left held a torture rack and a coffin, as well as a few crates and a table with an uneaten meal and few odds and end on top. Harald grimaced. “This doesn’t bode well, does it?”
“Not really.”
There was another suspended bridge across the mine, just past the torture rack. Harald looked across it, sighing as yet another shambling corpse approached them.
“Yup,” Ulkarin said.
It didn’t take Harald more than a moment or two to dispatch this enemy. He was surprised. Perhaps it was all the recent practice he’d gotten that was making him better. Or maybe this one had been weak.
There was a pathway on the other side of the bridge; but on this side, past the grisly torture setup and down another ramp was another dimly-lit area, this one set up for alchemy. Harald headed for it, not only out of interest but because the darker areas beneath them could well conceal enemies. He didn’t feel like being surprised yet again. It was unremarkable. Aside from the alembic there were some hard-to-find ingredients and several finished potions. Harald scooped these up without a second thought. If they belonged to a necromancer, they didn’t belong out in the open.
The dark corridor he’d been worried about wound further downward and into a cave lit by a small opening to the skies above, a leafless tree barely holding on to life in the small patch of daylight it created. They weren’t that deep, then. He could see the remnants of ore veins, their surfaces scored by pickaxes; a chunk of green ore nearby told him that this probably was – or might have been – an orichalcum mine. An outcropping just past the tree also had a greenish hue in its spidery veins, but it didn’t look like orichalcum to him. He stepped up to it and studied it.
Malachite. I didn’t grow up around a pair of former miners for nothing. So the Reach may look bleak but it’s got some rich resources even so.
The only ways out of this corner of the mine were back across the suspended bridge the way they’d come, or through another metal gate. He tried the gate. Unsurprisingly, it was locked.
“Hmm. I’m not great with locks. Let’s take the path of least resistance and go back.”
The passage hugged the wall above the malachite vein, and down a ramp beyond it into a narrow and very dark tunnel. Planks lining the floor spoke of human occupation. If Ulkarin was right and there was a necromancer down here, he couldn’t have found a more perfectly isolated spot to work.
They rounded a bend into a wider corridor, its ceiling shored up by thick wooden supports. There was light beyond, but Harald didn’t have a chance to register what was there because yet another corpse ran out from the darkness to attack.
“Say your prayers,” Ulkarin murmured from behind Harald.
The creature didn’t seem too terribly strong, so as Harald beat it down he chuckled.
“Can’t say my prayers in the middle of a fight, Tiny.”
“I meant these two other guys,” Ulkarin growled, as an additional pair of corpses emerged from the shadows. Harald watched from the corner of his eye as Ulkarin raised his axe and brought it down across the neck of the nearest enemy, making quick work of it. Then, as Harald finished off the first corpse, Ulkarin neatly lopped the head off the third.
“Nicely done,” Harald told him.
There wasn’t much to be seen beneath the hanging lamps aside from evidence of a mining operation abruptly left unfinished. Chunks of ore and mining tools seemed to have been simply dropped in place. The path branched ahead of them, one side leading to a partially-mined orichalcum vein and the other down another long ramp. Harald started forward but then heaved a sigh of irritation as another zombie rushed up the ramp toward them. He took a couple of swipes at the creature, swinging around it to avoid the wood axe in its hand. Then Ulkarin once more stepped in, bringing his monstrous battleaxe down across the dead man with a sickening crunch.
“Behind you,” he said calmly. “Another poor sod that I’ll have to clean off my blade.”
Harald whirled to find a blue-eyed corpse staring malevolently at him and raising its sword. He growled back at it. He blocked the blow and then reached around his shield to skewer the zombie, using his own weight, a small jump, and the angle of the ramp to his advantage.
“How many more of these damned things are there, anyway?”
“At least one,” Ulkarin growled, pointing ahead toward another hanging lantern. There was a waterfall nearby, emerging from the wall above and in front of them and dropping into a well-lit pool. The mineshaft turned left here, around a solid stone support left unmined; and from behind that emerged another corpse.
Harald felt the irritation in the pit of his stomach fanning itself into full-blown anger. This was getting ridiculous and he wanted no more of it. He ran forward to meet his enemy with a solid shield bash and an intense overhand strike powered by pure spite. The creature crumpled to the ground and Harald stared at it, a bit amazed that he’d taken it down so easily.
“That was quite the blow,” Ulkarin said.
“Yes,” Harald murmured. “I’m not sure where it came from.” He looked around and spotted a table with several small items on top, among which was a key that he scooped up eagerly. “I’m just glad it was over quickly. In the meantime, I’ll bet this key unlocks that gate back where we were.”
There was also a smelter here, still warm, further evidence that this had been a working mine until just recently. This space was a dead-end, the openings where the water flowed in making a convenient vent for smelter fumes.
“I’d like to grab a pickaxe myself and see what baubles a fancy dig like this would have in store,” Ulkarin said.
“Baubles. Interesting choice of words for lumps of orichalcum.” Harald shrugged. “I guess we go back and check that gate. There’s nowhere else to go from here.”
“Onward, then.”
As Harald passed the pool, a harsh voice from somewhere beyond it cried out. “Hello? Who’s that?”
There’s our man.
He looked back at Ulkarin, who nodded. In unspoken agreement, they dropped down into crouches, slinking back up the wooden ramp and around corridors until reaching the gate. Harald tried the key, gingerly slipping it into the lock to make as little noise as possible. As he’d expected, it clicked and the gate swung open.
They passed through a room containing a chest and a table topped by random items, and started down the earthen slope beyond. He shouldn’t have been surprised that another pair of corpses rushed up toward them, but it did surprise him. He was beyond annoyed.
“Yeah, I hear it too,” Ulkarin muttered.
It took only a few moments for the two angry men to take down the two undead. Ulkarin took a particularly vicious swing at the second of them and nearly halved it; Harald’s beating on the first one was only slightly less fearful. He sighed, ready to relax for just a moment, and then jumped as an ice spike just missed his face and splattered against the wall just short of Ulkarin. At the bottom of the slope, just beyond another table full of junk, there he was: an old man in black robes.
“Found you,” Harald hissed, rushing down toward the necromancer with his shield at the ready. The necromancer cast another ice spike; this one struck the shield and stinging particles of ice flew off it, striking Harald in the face.
It was the last straw.
“SU- GRAH!”
Harald’s Voice filled the cavern, rattling the suspended lanterns and the scattered mining equipment. He leapt forward, eager to end the necromancer’s existence, pushing through the damage of the frost spell with his blade now magically-enhanced. The spellcaster’s eyes widened in fear. In the time he took to prepare another spell Harald had landed three rapid strikes. With the fourth he uttered a loud cry, planting himself just in front of the necromancer and whirling, using the momentum, his mass, and the Shout’s magical enhancement to land a savage blow. The necromancer’s head flew off, disappearing into the dark, and Harald stopped, panting, removing his helmet and staring down at the headless body, still too angry to do anything else.
“That was something,” Ulkarin said quietly.
“Don’t,” Harald hissed. “Just… give me a moment.”
He didn’t know what had come over him – again – but it made him feel sick to his stomach. I’ve always been a quiet person. Calm. I was raised to behave in court, not slaughter people in wartime. What is this?
“What’s the matter?”
Harald breathed deeply and turned to look at his companion. “I don’t know where that comes from. I’d barely even fought in an actual battle until a few months ago and now I’ve taken heads. Quite a few of them. It just boils up inside, and…”
Ulkarin shrugged. “Some of us just do that.” He cocked his head to one side. “Besides, if the old tales are right and you really came from Atmorans it’s just part of you. Be happy that you have the strength to do it. It’ll serve you well.”
Harald thought about it for a moment and nodded. “I hadn’t looked at it quite that way before but you’re right. It has actually gotten me out of a couple of really tough situations.” He grinned, then, thinking about his extended family. “No wonder my ‘uncles’ wanted to be certain I trained hard. They probably knew I wouldn’t be confined to a nice safe existence in… Well, never mind. Thanks, Tiny. I needed that perspective.”
Ulkarin snorted. “Tiny.” He started checking the room, rifling through the necromancer’s things.
“Yeah. And that ice hurt.” Harald cast healing on himself, sighing as the warmth of the spell soothed some of the icy aching in his bones.
“Hey, take a look at what I found,” his huge companion said, handing him a tattered journal.
Harald flipped it open and started reading. “…the others told me to conduct it on living persons, preferably a village or small settlement so that we can see the results of the spell and send a warning… What in Oblivion? There are more of them?” He glanced up at Ulkarin, who shrugged. “He altered ‘the master’s’ spell to give it a wider area of effect. That must explain the scorch marks and the fire.”
He read more, and felt the sickening remnants of his overwhelming rage stir again. The necromancer had wanted to create living thralls, not corpses. But it had gone wrong. “Listen to this: ‘the spell tore through the hamlet, searing the flesh of all that were in the way. I could hear the screams for days, from this mine.’ That’s foul, Ulkarin! Just foul!”
“That it is. The other sick part is that whoever this maggot’s master was still lives and breathes. Who knows what may happen.”
“Right. Even if the spell is only meant to make living people obedient it’s just wrong.” He shook out his tight arms and shoulders, trying to rid himself of the last of his killing rage. “There’s really only one thing to do right now and that’s to go let Merosa know what we did. They can at least stop worrying about the undead wandering into town.”
“Let’s get going, then.”
They were almost back to the town’s southern gate when Harald heard it. It was a familiar sound, huge and hollow, reverberating through the skies like the knell of doom. He looked out ahead, over the rooftops, and saw a familiar shape.
“Wings.”
“It’s a griffon,” Ulkarin said. “I’ve seen it around.”
The scream sounded once more. Harald shook his head.
“No, Tiny. That’s a dragon. I’ve fought them before. Besides, griffons don’t use Dovahzul and this one’s definitely picking a fight. If it lands in town we’re in trouble. Let’s go!” He reached for the magic-imbued bow the Nerevarine had gifted him and felt it humming in his hand. “Damn. I wish Qara was here!”
“Who’s Qara?” Ulkarin asked.
But Harald didn’t have time to answer; the dragon was flying low over the Divide, coming straight for them. Harald ran for the bridge and slammed his helmet down onto his head, taking aim. His shot missed, but the dragon had spotted him and circled overhead, crashing down just behind him on the roadway.
More startling was the explosion of magical energy beside Harald, out of which stepped the spirit of Shor – the same manifestation of power he’d experienced while fighting the dragon near Bonestrewn Crest with Qara. The spirit Shouted: Unrelenting Force, sharp as a blade and broad as the surface of Harald’s shield, the shock wave tossing the dragon’s head up and back before it could unleash its own attack on a startled Ulkarin standing far too close to its deadly teeth.
Ulkarin shared one quick glance with Harald and then reached for his battleaxe. Harald readied his bow again, watching in awe as Ulkarin calmly entered battle mode, all concerns set aside as simply as though someone had thrown a lever in his mind. The spirit conjuration beat on the dragon’s snout, Ulkarin took a massive swing at its neck, and much to Harald’s dismay the town blacksmith ran past yelling, and attacked the dragon with his simple iron dagger, wearing nothing more solid than his leather smithing apron.
“No!” Harald shouted at him; but realizing that it was pointless over the noise of the battle he gritted his teeth and started firing arrows as fast as he could draw the bow.
I’m a lousy archer, but this is a magical bow and if that thing gets into the air again it’s all I’ve got, really.
Just as he had that thought the dragon leapt into the skies, wings wide. It was close enough that Harald could see an arrow protruding from its neck and another heading for it – and he realized that the gate guards had entered the fray as well. Harald took another shot at it but missed; in his frustration he did the only other thing he could as the beast flew over him.
“IIZ!”
The plume of intense cold flew from him up into the air – and reached the spot the dragon had been a moment after it had passed. Harald swore loudly, happy that nobody could hear him over the humming of his magic and the roar of the dragon.
It circled overhead again, scattering townspeople, and crashed to the ground again just in front of Ulkarin. “This ends here!” the huge man shouted, taking a massive swing at the dragon who avoided the impact at the last second. The dragon snapped at Ulkarin and then at the spirit warrior.
To Oblivion with it!
Harald could see blood on the dragon’s neck. He knew it was likely injured enough to stay grounded. He swapped the bow for his sword and shield and rushed forward, raking the spikes of his shield across the few openings he saw on the creatures neck and slashing at its head with his sword.
Then the area erupted in an overwhelming flood of sound. The dragon screamed its magical attack in a wide area of shock, a series of rapid-fire explosions. The spirit warrior didn’t even flinch; instead he Shouted Unrelenting Force once more. Ulkarin was yelling “kiss my blade!” again and from somewhere beyond the dragon’s bulk the blacksmith howled in anger. Harald repeated his Ice Form Shout, striking his target this time. And that was enough; his blade and Ulkarin’s struck home at the same moment and the dragon crumpled to the ground, defeated.
The spirit warrior gave Harald an approving nod and dissipated. The blacksmith made a triumphant sound and trotted back up the wooden ramp to the bridge as though he hadn’t just thrown himself practically into the mouth of a full-grown dragon. Harald removed his helmet and looked at the carcass, shaking his head and sighing.
“I wish Qara was here,” he said again.
Ulkarin came to stand beside him. “So I’ll ask again. Who’s this Qara?”
Harald blinked in surprise. For some reason the question had caught him off-guard, and he felt himself flushing.
“Uh, well… Qaralana. She’s my best friend.”
Ulkarin smirked. “And what does that ‘friend’ have to do with the fact that we’re lookin’ at a dead dragon?”
Harald frowned at him. “What’s that smirk for? She’s my friend, Ulkarin. We practically grew up together.” He gathered up what little dignity he had available, lifted his chin, and cleared his throat. “She also happens to be the Dragonborn. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of that before, but she’s the only living being who can absorb the soul of a dragon and thus make certain it’s dead forever.”
Ulkarin stared at him for a moment and then started snickering. “That’s good, Harald. That’s really good. Absorbing a dragon, eh? Good one.”
Harald felt his face flush again. “I’m serious.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever you say. Listen, Harald, you wouldn’t be the first warrior who was looking for a little something extra after a big kill. Sounds like this girl would be it, if she was here. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
For a moment Harald felt as if he’d been struck in the head with a polearm. Stunned, he was, and not just by the fact that Ulkarin hadn’t known about the Dragonborn. It wasn’t even the total inappropriateness of the comment he’d made. It was just the idea of…
Me, and Qara? Together?
Suddenly his mind presented him with the memory of the evening they’d shared a kiss. It had been before he’d gone off to Markarth and ended up in Cidhna Mine, before she’d learned she was Dragonborn.
Before all the big things happened to us.
They’d stood outside his house and stared at each other for what had felt like a lifetime before going inside his house. They’d sat in front of the fire and talked, and then the curiosity of it all had gotten to be too much for him to bear.
They all expected it. Everyone. She thought so, too. She even told me it was embarrassing for her as well, to have everyone just assume we would be together.
So he’d leaned forward and cupped her cheek in his hand, and had asked her “may I?” and when she’d answered with a breathless “yes” he had kissed her. And then, after a long moment, they’d separated, looked at each other, and broken up into waves of giggles.
Laughing at each other. Just like best friends do.
But he remembered what it had felt like. Her warm, soft cheek. The whisper of her breath next to his. The velvety, sweet touch of her lips. He remembered, and he’d thought about it off and on over the time between then and now. He remembered it, and was glad that Ulkarin didn’t see the furious flushing on his pale skin, as they dashed up toward the church.
Me and Qara.
Then he thought about Dale Perdeti kissing her in the marketplace. He frowned at himself.
Unless I’ve completely ruined it.
He didn’t find Merosa, but he did find one of her advisors, Entemon.
“We’ve dealt with the undead, and the necromancer who made them. You shouldn’t have any more sneaking into your town.”
The man beamed. “Great job! We can sleep without having one eye open, now that those ghouls are gone. And if you’re curious as to what that mad mage was doing in those mines, the Bishop up at Evermore might spare some of his precious time to fill you in on those necromancers. They’ve been a nuisance since forever. Before I forget, here’s the gold for the job.”
Harald thanked him. As they made their way out of the church he scooped a handful of coins from the purse he’d been given and handed the rest to Ulkarin.
“Here. Ease the pain in your legs some more.”
“That’s generous of you.”
“You were a huge help and I have plenty of coin. You’re quite welcome to it.”
But these people knew about the necromancers for a long time and did nothing about it. I don’t like that. They were sending us into danger and not telling us why. I think we should find out.