How do I even describe to you what it means to be able to smell the evening breeze and have it explode like a rainbow of colour in your head? To be able to smell the blood of everyone within a hundred yards of you? To hear their hearts beating. You simply wouldn’t know unless you’ve done it. I remember being awake and aware, outside the forge, running here and there. I couldn’t speak, but I could see the torches below…and while I knew there was prey down there, there were too many. I couldn’t and more to the point, shouldn’t fight them. Maybe it is the fact I am of the Tree-Sap People that I didn’t just run rampant, but instead I clambered over the Skyforge and dropped down, down, down to the stones below, leaping over the rocks and the underbrush, scenting an elk nearby and determined to have a kill -
When I next came to myself, I was cold, shivering on the tundra and without a stitch on – blood was in my mouth and my arms were smeared with it. Aela approached, carrying a torch, and stood over me with a small grin.
“Well, tracked you at last. You almost caused as much trouble as Farkas did, but you managed to hold it together.”
“Where are the others?” I mumbled. I belched behind my hand – I had eaten a fair bit of that elk. True, I normally had it cooked…my stomach flopped a moment but I managed not to be ill.
“Back at Jorrvaskr,” Aela replied, chucking a bag full of my gear at me. ”Let them stay there – they’re denying their gift, and that’s fine if they want to. But us…well, we have something else in mind. And to celebrate your initiation into the inner circle, we’re going to take out a camp of the Silver Hand nearby. Skjor has already gone ahead to scout the area. You’ll learn how to use your new gift…but be careful of the blades, silver is quite painful to us. I think you can handle yourself even so.”
Still shivering in the cold, I dressed as quickly as I could, hopping in place to try and warm up a bit. I felt different even now – I was different; I felt warmer, my senses were sharper…and for the first time in a long time I actually wanted to hunt something, or someone. That shouldn’t have shocked me, but it did. Well any resolve I had previously had was now done and done. More to the point, the Meat Pact was certainly going to be a lot easier this way…
However, I had not just joined the Circle, I had joined a side. The conversation I had overheard now made considerable sense – Kodlak, Vilkas and Farkas on one side, and myself, Aela and Skjor on the other. Granted, I think Farkas was more ambivalent as he could control it better, but Vilkas struggled.
A little voice in the back of my head murmured that I had just done something mindbogglingly stupid and I was about to compound it, but I shoved it back and ignored it. I wasn’t Dovahkiin now; I was just a hired sword in a group of boozing ruffians. It was home. I was in control, and I’d prove it.
“Let’s get going then,” I said as I managed a grin. ”Your doom is now mine – we’ll hunt as allies, Bosmer and Nord.”
Aela nodded solemnly, her eyes gleaming as she thumped my shoulder with her fist in acknowledgement. ”Let’s go hunting, sister.”
On we went – it felt as if I could run for leagues. We started a hare in the grass, but my belly was full and I had energy and to spare. Aela ran beside me, stride for stride, her eyes fixed straight ahead, nostrils flaring.
“Feel that?” Aela panted, darting me a feral grin.
“It’s exhilirating,” I replied….and it was. I have to admit, it was.
“And they’d seek to abandon the power of this,” she added scornfully. But we were slowing now, and she extended her arm. I came to a halt at the opening of cavern, and I could smell blood, coppery and sweet, upon the air. However Aela snarled, and narrowed her eyes to slits. As we rounded the corner, I could see why: the heads of werewolves mounted on sticks, the blood frozen in pools beneath their severed necks. The Silver Hand’s den.
“Where’s Skjor?” I whispered, knowing her heightened senses would pick up my voice. She frowned, speaking with a faint edge to her voice.
“I think he’s already gone inside. That…wasn’t very wise. He’s a fierce fighter but…”
I frowned and limbered up my bow, making my way inside.
There were a few guards at the entry, but I managed to shoot these immediately. Aela came up ahead of me, sniffing the air in the tunnels – I could smell it too. Blood. A lot of it. The smell of kin as well. This would be a long business.
“Look, the gates are down – they must have locked the place up after Skjor came in. Cowards.” She spat on the ground, and I managed to rig the mechanism and open the gate.
Whoever we found, we slew. The more I slew, the more brutal I became with my killing blow. I revelled in the killing in a way I had never done before, and while a part of me was horrified, another part of me howled with the glory of it. Any promises to not kill any longer was gone, like smoke in the wind. And silver…yes I discovered how much silver blades hurt; like fire in the veins, it burned and cut and tore and stung. I howled, cursed and fought back all the harder, but managed to keep from shifting. I didn’t have the strength, I was still a cub.
But we still hadn’t found Skjor, and I could tell Aela was getting worried; she didn’t get careless, but she did hurry along, past the holding cells of feral werewolves and down into a stairway. We could hear nothing in the room beyond; if there had been a battle, it was now over. The silence was disconcerting.
She gestured to me and I nodded and drew my sword. We had no idea how many were in the following room, even with our heightened senses. Steeling ourselves, we kicked the door in together and sprang into the centre of the room.
Silver Hand, with bloodied silver blades, were grouped in a ring round a body on the ground, scored with many wounds – a bald head, and the gleam of Skyrim armour on a cloven shoulder.
It was all I needed to see; I stared only for a moment, and then Aela was upon them. She shifted so quickly I didn’t even see the change – growling, biting, ripping, tearing. I had enough presence of mind to leap into the fray and try and keep the main crush of Silver Hand off her, but only just. There was no mercy, and no remorse. It was blood for blood.
When the last of the Silver Hand fell, I gasped and wiped my blade clean – blood spattered the walls and the floor, and I knelt at Skjor’s corpse, closing his staring eyes with my fingers. I had lost a friend; Skjor wasn’t a very personable man, but he had been a Companion. He had been kin – for all my protests, I felt as if I had lost a relative of my own clan.
Aela came up behind me, strapping on her armour once more, her voice tinged with rage and sorrow though she didn’t shed a tear, no, not Aela.
“He should have known better! He shouldn’t have entered without a shield-brother!” She sighed, kneeling and blinking rapidly as she brushed her fingers over Skjor’s brow.
“Let’s get him out of this den,” I said dully, and she nodded.
We made a makeshift stretcher with some of the spears on the wall, and dragged him out into the night. We’d have a long stretch to travel with our burden back to the Companions, but we did it, grimly and with our hearts heavy.
“They’ll pay. They’ll all pay. We’ll wipe the Silver Hand off the face of Skyrim,” Aela grated as we struggled to drag Skjor’s corpse all the way back to Whiterun. ”We’ll just keep it between us, but we’ll have them. We’ll have them all.”
I glared at Aela, my temper flaring – and my sense of guilt as well. ”How will doing the exact same thing over again help? No one knew you gave me the blood, and no one knew we were out here!” I might have marvelled at my temper, but that also seemed a drawback of the blood. What had I done?
She hissed at me, her eyes flaring a moment, faint hints of gold round the pupils of her eyes. ”No one else will get things done! We can’t cower in Jorrvaskr forever…you’ve seen the hall; we’re taking in the dregs right now as all the good hands have joined the war.” She took a deep breath, getting herself under control as she pulled anew at our makeshift stretcher. ”We will have glory again, and we will get the job done when no one else could be bothered.” She gave me a smile without humour, teeth flashing in the darkness. ”Trust the women to do what the men could not, eh?”
My conscience still grated – I imagine hers did as well, but Aela wasn’t one to admit such a thing; she was aloof, and her idea of” getting things done” usually meant wandering off for weeks. But I was utterly at sea – and she seemed to have a plan at any rate.
“I’ll bring Skjor back to Jorrvaskr. I want you to get over to the east and do a few jobs,” Aela said. ”I’ll give you some locations – we’ve heard there some trouble in Riften and they could do with some muscle. Stay busy, stay low, and when I get a bit more information about where the next nest of milk-drinkers is hiding, I’ll let you know.”
I frowned. I wasn’t comfortable with that – a man was dead thanks to our little jaunt, but I appreciated Aela was going to be the one to take the hits for what we had done. A change of scenery might be good…besides, I was still too close to High Hrothgar for my own good; maybe I’d have a bit of luck in Riften as well.
Aela filled my quiver with arrows and I left her to haul Skjor back home. As I watched her trudge back with her burden, I had a moment where I almost called to her to argue the case and return. Looking back now upon my younger, foolish self, I wish I had – I want to reach out myself from running. I want to talk some sense into myself, standing at a crossroads in more ways than one, with the blood of more than one beast in my veins, the threads of wyrd shirring beneath my feet.
But I didn’t. Instead, I turned upon me heel and, following Aela’s instructions, I made my way to Riften alone.
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