II - Helgen

There seemed to be no end to the southern rains, wind whispering through the trees and thunder grumbling distantly overhead. Merill and Kiseen rode in silence, hoods pulled up over their faces, their horses’ hooves squelching on the muddy trail. Merill’s euphoria at their triumphant escape had faded fast ten minutes out of Markarth, when Kiseen had slumped over on her horse from an arrow in her shoulder. There had been a terrible moment of hesitation before Merill wound back around to help her, fearing that same guilt over Brelin and Nalimir that had haunted her for five years.

“How is it?” Merill ventured, breaking the damp silence.

“Aches,” Kiseen answered gruffly, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders and wincing. Merill had managed to pull the arrowhead out two days previous, but she worried about the infection. She used to know all the forest plants for healing, but it had been years since she’d been in the forest, and those memories were gone.

“You been here before?” Kiseen ventured, and Merill glanced over at her, startled. “It’s just…you seem like you know the roads. Which way to go and all.”

“Just...going south,” Merill answered hastily, her eyes back to the muddy trail before them. “We’re going to Cyrodiil, right? And Cyrodiil’s in the south.”

“Forget I asked,” Kiseen murmured. In truth, being in the southern forests again unsettled Merill. Where she had once found such solace in the tower pines and hazy green shadows and the perpetually rainy sky, now every whisper of wind that made the pine needles twirl reminded her of Nalimir racing through the trees, mud splattered on his face, fear in his eyes as fire sent shadows across his face.

They went on for some hours, mostly in silence, following the twisting, muddy trail that turned more overgrown and dark the deeper they followed it. When the sky was beginning to darken and the rain starting to fade, they first heard the other voices, coming from somewhere in the dark trees.

Kiseen yanked back on her horse’s reins, her ears pricking under her hood, and Merill instinctively whipped her bow off her back, nocking an arrow from the quiver at her hip. She stared at the ground, letting her left ear carry the weight of her dead eye, and slowly raised the bow, directed at the trees ahead.

“We got them all, I told you,” one was saying, a stuffy-sounding Imperial man.

“Protocol is to search a five kilometer radius of the camp,” another voice responded, certainly a Nord this time. Merill made to draw her arrow back, but Kiseen hastily rested a hand on her arm, lowering it. Before they had a chance to react, four men clad in Imperial red burst onto the trail, and Merill yanked the bowstring back, holding it angled at their heads. Kiseen had drawn her spear from her back, grasping it tight despite the pain in her shoulder.

“Hold,” the leader said, as the three others drew their blades. “Lower your weapons.”

“Maybe when you go on your way,” Merill shot back, and Kiseen cast her a look.

“We don’t want any trouble,” she told them, holding her spear back with one paw and raising the other in a peace gesture.

“Then why’s this one got her arrow pointed at us, eh?” one asked sharply.

“We’re just travelling,” Kiseen tried again.

“Travelling this close to the border?” the leader drawled. “With two purebred mounts? Hard to imagine you’re just out taking a walk. I’ll tell you one more time, lower your weapons.”

“You got emigration papers?” another asked. “Or are you working with the Stormcloaks? Trying to sneak someone out of Skyrim?”

“This one’s a Khajiit, idiot,” another snapped. “They’re not working with the Stormcloaks.”

“Not this one,” the leader said, stepping forward. Merill angled her arrow toward him, her grip on the nock tightening. He stood boldly before it, a smirk on his face. “What’s a good Nord girl like you doing with a cat, eh lass?” he asked her, and Merill narrowed her eyes, keeping her aim firm. She could kill this man easily, but would they be able to get away from the others in time?

“Go on, girl, put it down,” another called. Merill didn’t dare take her eyes off him, forcing herself not to glance at Kiseen.

“Search them,” he commanded, and the officers moved forward to pull them off their horses. She heard Kiseen leap from her horse and heard her yowl as they kicked her to the ground. In an instant, she turned her arrow on the officer who’d strode away and let it fly, burying itself deep into the back of his skull. The trail erupted into chaos, and Merill felt herself thrown to the ground, her bow pried from her grip. She struggled, but then there was a searing pain in her head and the world spun and went dark.

* * *

A loose stone in the path jolted her awake.

Merill started as her head snapped to one side and her vision cleared to reveal the swishing tail of a horse, its rhythmic hoofbeats feeling wrongly calm and clashing with the air of doom that had settled over the cart.

“You’re awake.” Merill turned to face the grizzled man that sat across from her, his face smeared with blood and his eyes grim. She didn’t answer, but glanced around the rest of the cart – three other tired-looking men, two in blue Stormcloak armor and one in rags. Another cart was ahead of them and Merill craned her neck to try and see who sat inside, but the mist from the previous night’s rain was too thick. The sky overhead was a pale, bland grey, a grim morning. Merill sat back in her seat, fiddling with the ties on her wrists. There was silence for a time, broken only by those steady, rhythmic beats from the horse’s hooves.

“You were trying to cross the border, weren’t you?” the man across from her asked, and Merill’s attention snapped back to him.

“How do you know that?” she asked hastily, and he looked surprised.

“Heard a soldier saying it when they were putting you up,” he told her offhandedly.

“And the other that was with me? The Khajiit What about her?” The man shook his head, glancing at the cart’s rough-hewn floor. Merill’s stomach dropped. No, she thought desperately, trying to see the cart ahead of them again. Please, Talos, no. Not Kiseen too.

“Heard them say she put up a good fight, at least,” another murmured, and frustration pulled at Merill, angry, hot frustration. Again.

“Where are we going?” she asked the man, refusing to let herself look weak. She hadn’t cried in years, not since she lost her eye fleeing from the forest.

“End of the line,” one of the other Stormcloaks responded dolefully.

“What do you mean, ‘end’?” the man in rags asked, panic in his voice.

“What do you think, horse-thief?” the grizzled soldier murmured, shaking his head. He stared off over the driver’s shoulder. “This…This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here…” he drifted off, and Merill followed his gaze to the stone-and-wood walls of a small village. Guards prowling the walls opened the great wooden gates and the cart ahead of theirs trundled through.

“What’s wrong with him?” the horse-thief was asking, staring past Merill.

“Watch your tone!” the grizzled man snapped, his voice turning to anger. “You are speaking of Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King of Skyrim!”

Merill turned, alarmed, to face the silent bear of a man hulking in the seat beside her – he glared downward, gagged and bound with chain rather than rope like the rest of them, his dirty yellow braids hanging limply on a once-grand fur cloak. Does this mean the war’s done?

A shadow rippled over the cart as they passed beneath the walls and into the town, watched by clusters of children along the houses and their grim-faced kin, Imperial soldiers in red and gold on dark horses, Thalmor that watched with faces narrowed in disdain. General Tullius was there, his eyes scanning the faces of the condemned. Merill met their gaze, her mind racing. Focus on getting out, she told herself hastily. You can do that. You’ve gotten out of worse than this.

The carts rounded the corner and came to a halt in the square, where a block stained black stood before a box. A hooded priest stood beside the executioner, whispering prayers. Merill felt her stomach drop. No… surely execution wasn’t the punishment for trying to leave Skyrim… Panic welled inside her, her heart racing and her face growing hot. Merill and Nalimir had once seen an execution in Falkreath, the beheading of a man who’d ravaged a little girl in the woods and then dumped her body in the well. They had been much younger then, and all Merill could remember were the jeers and screams of the villagers and the sickening thud as the man’s head left his neck. In the Reach, they just threw the condemned from the mountaintops, letting the rocky ground deliver justice.

Someone yelled a command, and the Stormcloaks around her stood as one, slowly moving to the ends of their carts, their faces dark. Merill joined them, staring around for an opening. There were stone walls – looked easy to climb too, not as old as Markarth’s, but with enough footholds to get by. How far would she make it though, with her hands bound up? She’d once scaled the side of Understone Keep with a great bleeding cut from an axe on one arm, but that was the worst she’d ever endured. Tied, and with a dozen arrows at her back…

She stared, hard, at the cobblestones as the Imperials read names from a list, as the rebels stepped forward one by one. The horse-thief tried to run, and an Imperial on horseback killed him with an arrow in the back. Fear began to claw its way up her throat.

“Who’s this?” someone inquired, and Merill looked up to see the Imperials watching her, standing alone beside the cart. “What’s your name, girl?” one of them asked. Merill stared back, hard. She every gaze trained on her, and still she was silent. Someone stepped up behind her and struck her, hard, on the back of the head. She fell to her knees, coughing blood.

“Easy, Coltius,” the Imperial Legate snapped sharply. “It doesn’t matter, she dies with the others.”

“She’s just a girl, Legate. A child.”

“I’m no child,” Merill snarled at them, and one of the soldiers kicked her, hard, in the side.

“See? Not a child. She goes to the block,” the Legate pronounced, turning to speak to a Thalmor that had approached. Merill craned her eyes up at them and her heart dropped at what she saw – the agent speaking to the Legate was a looming Altmer man, his fine-boned face cruel and pointed, his silky white hair braided out of the way of those dark gold eyes. She recognized him in an instant – the man who’d caught her in the woods, the man who’d cut out her eye and killed her family. Merill dropped her gaze, her heart pounding in her throat. Does he know me?

“At least you’ll die at home, sister,” the man beside the Legate murmured, putting away his list. The Thalmor with the Legate pushed another woman forward suddenly, a young Altmer that stumbled as she joined the executionees. The woman’s gold hair hung in a tangled knot around her head and her bright eyes were cold with anger. Merill glanced around, wondering if anyone else was puzzled by the presence of an Altmer at a Thalmor execution, but the other prisoners all stared downward. She lowered her gaze as well as the priest spoke their last rites, shouting over the jeers of the watching villagers. Someone threw a stone, and it struck the man beside her in the arm. He bit his lip but made no sound as blood began to trickle down his elbow.

Merill forced herself to watch, struggling to keep her face blank, as the first Stormcloak was pushed forward and shoved to his knees upon the block, as the hooded executioner raised his blackened axe and removed the rebel’s head with a single clean swipe. The man’s head rolled neatly into the box, lifeless body slumping to the side as the onlookers screamed. She glanced to the side, at the other Stormcloaks that watched with grim stoicism.

“Now, the girl,” the Legate called, and Merill moved forward, staring around for an exit, anything. But fear was screaming in her gut now. She felt that hot, primal feeling deep inside her, curdling and driving upward, clawing to escape, but it didn’t know how.

Someone shoved her down, and her chin hit the stone, hard, splitting her lip. She tasted blood as she stared at the severed head of the man who had come before her, her breath sharp in her throat. She glanced upward, staring around for help, and her eyes met the Thalmor agent. His brow furrowed at the sight of her, but just as the recognition dawned on his face, the executioner kicked her and seized her tangled mat of red curls, tossing them over her face to show her neck. Merill could feel her heart pounding against the stone block.

A sudden sound echoed across the mountains around Helgen, causing all to raise their heads skyward. Merill chanced a glance up, but the executioner’s boot forced her down again.

So this is how it ends, she thought bitterly, licking the salty blood from her lip. Didn’t even make it past the border.

“What was that?” someone muttered. Then a woman screamed, and the executioner had raised his axe high, not looking as a great shadow darkened the sky and landed upon Helgen’s tower, shaking the earth. The executioner stumbled, dropping his axe, and Merill scrambled to her knees as the colossal shadow stared down upon the screaming crowd, its flaming eyes meeting hers. The beast screamed a word, and thunder filled the sky as it swirled into an ashy red.

Merill slowly rose to her feet as rebels and Imperials alike streamed past her, some drawing weapons and others shrieking in fear. She stared into the eyes of the black, jagged monster, feeling hypnotized by the fire in its gaze.

“Quickly, girl!” someone shouted, and the grizzled man from her cart seized her arm and pulled her away from the block, toward the keep in the centre of the village. Merill regained her footing and followed him, ducking into the lower floor of the tower as the ground shook beneath her.

“What was that thing?” the haggard man was asking to the other Imperials that lined the tower.

“A dragon. It had to be.” Merill yanked the door open, staring outside, but one of the soldiers pulled her away, slamming it shut as the ground trembled.

“Let go of me!” she snapped, trying to pull away, but the tower shook again, stones raining down from the ceiling, forcing her to duck.

“Get out of here!” she heard one of the soldiers shout, and someone flung her toward the stairs that spiraled up the wall of the tower and pushed her upward. As she staggered toward the first landing, the very wall collapsed and the beast’s head plunged in, breathing searing flame into the tower. Merill stumbled backward and the great dragon’s head vanished, the tower shaking again as it launched itself away. The grizzled Imperial pulled her up to the landing, pointing through the hole the beast had made at a ruined building below.

“This tower’s about to come down,” he breathed heavily. “Can you make the jump down?” Merill shoved his hands away from her and stepped back, readying herself for the leap. “I’ll meet you on the ground!” she heard the man shout, but she had already jumped, sailing through the air and landing, hard, on the wood of the inn below. She struggled to her feet, blood welling on the scrapes across her hands and knees, as the boards splintered and dropped her on the lower floor amid a shower of dust and broken wood. Merill got to her feet, coughing and wiping blood across her face from a wound somewhere. She glanced around for something that would cut the ropes that bound her hands, but a roar overhead made her abandon her search and move on.

The ground was utter chaos, every building afire and every man loosing arrows at the great beast that circled the sky. Merill stumbled past them all, running blindly, not knowing where to go or what to do.

“This way!” someone called, and Merill sprinted blindly toward the voice, coming from the stone keep. She flew inside, stumbling on the rough stones as the soldier that had tried to show her mercy slammed and barred the door behind them.

“Here,” the man said, offering her a potion. He was kind-faced, thick-muscled with dark hair that was matted with blood. She knocked it out of his hands and sat up, wiping the blood from her chin.

“I don’t need it,” she snarled, making to push away as he knelt before her. “At least let me get those binds off you,” he muttered, snatching up a knife on the ground.

“I don’t need your help,” she hissed.

“You can try and kill me after we get out of here,” he said, grabbing her wrists and beginning to saw at the bindings. “I’m not leaving a girl here on her own. There,” he murmured as the ropes slid onto the floor. Merill met his gaze, rubbing the raw skin on her wrists.

“What was that thing?” she asked quietly.

“A dragon,” the man said with a sort of terrible reverence, standing and offering her a hand. She took it, pulling herself to her feet and staring around. They were in a high-ceilinged tower room, the walls coated with moss and leaking dust as the stones shook with the dragon’s muffled roars. “I believed them gone, but…that was all it could have been.” He moved to the side of the room, where a dead rebel lay face down in a puddle of steaming blood. “You may as well take his equipment,” the man said, leaning down and pulling off the man’s armour.

“I’d sooner feed myself to that beast than wear Stormcloak colors,” she muttered as another roar shook the tower room. “Or Imperial colors. I don’t work for either of you.”

“This is about surviving lass, not principle,” he tried, but Merill crossed her arms stubbornly. “Then at least take his axe,” the man sighed, holding it out to her. Merill took it uncertainly. The weapon felt heavy and gawky in her hand, wrong and loud. She felt a pang for her bow, undoubtedly on some dead Imperial’s back now, and another for the old bow Brelin had helped her make, lost when she had fled the forest years ago.

Sudden voices from the hall beyond echoed into the tower room, and he pulled her down beside him, out of sight of the gated door.

“Can you fight with that, girl?” he whispered as the voices drew nearer.

“A bow would be surer in my hand, but this will do,” she muttered, hefting the axe. The door swung open and two Stormcloaks came through, immediately set upon by the soldier’s blade. Merill took the larger of the two, sending his helmet flying with a knock from the blunt end of the axe and burying the front of it in his exposed head. The man crumpled to the ground, spurting blood all down Merill’s front, and she bent to search him as the Imperial bent to search the other soldier

“You’re not bad with that, girl,” he remarked as Merill drew forth with a few loose coins that she tucked into her tunic. She didn’t respond. The man frowned. “We should get going. I’m Hadvar, by the way,” he added, but Merill didn’t respond.

The last thing she wanted to do was follow an armed Imperial that looked to be a good hands taller than her, but there seemed to be little other option. So she trailed Hadvar through the basement of the tower, then around and through into the caves far underground as they met with more Stormcloaks, searching for a passage out. It was not long before they met a Stormcloak with a longbow across his back, and Merill gratefully threw away the axe and buckled the dead man’s quiver around her hips. She rose with the bow, testing the string and draw with her finger. It was a longbow, simple and not very powerful, made for the shooting flank of an Imperial infantry, but it would do.

Before long, they had found a passage leaking snow and light into the cavern, and the soldiers trooped out of it one by one, blinking in the sunlight.

“Get down,” Hadvar hissed as a roar echoed above them, and the soldiers took cover in the brush along the path, Hadvar pulling Merill down beside him. The great black dragon soared overhead, his scream circling the mountains that edged the valley. It beat its wings twice and vanished into the clouds that coated the sky, leaving an eerie silence in his wake. The other soldiers rose slowly, sheathing their weapons and staring skyward with troubled faces.

“We should get to Riverwood,” Hadvar murmured, “let them know what’s going on.” He turned to speak to Merill, but she was already gone, dashing down the hill and into the trees. Living in a Markarth gang had imbued a mistrust of soldiers in her, and she wanted nothing to do with their war. She ran more quickly than they could, smaller and unarmored, and darted through the rocks and bushes, wading through the first water she found. The river water was murky and freezing, but she had gone so long in a torn-up tunic and leggings that she barely noticed the cold as she emerged, sopping, from the water and scaled an enormous evergreen, pulling herself into the cover of its needles and peering out from between them to search for any sign of pursuers, but the Imperials seemed to not much care or have given up.

Merill leaned back against the evergreen’s trunk, holding the longbow in her lap and letter her breath slow. I need a plan, she told herself firmly. Kiseen was dead and a dragon just destroyed Helgen. She was utterly alone in the world, for the first time since the Thalmor burned their cabin. She knew the river she’d just crossed was the White River, in Falkreath Hold, but she couldn’t bear to go back to Falkreath. New people rarely came to that village, and they would surely remember her and cast her out again. There was nothing left for her in the rainy southern lands.

Merill shifted on the branch, staring north. She had forgotten most of the geography Brelin had taught her, but she knew the White River fed into a city not far from Falkreath. Whiterun, maybe? I can go there, she thought, sliding off the branch and onto the mossy, snow-dusted ground. And…figure something out from there. She didn’t like being in the forests, not anymore. She needed a city, a place where she could tuck herself into a dark corner and watch the world trickle by. Merill decided began to follow the river north, her boots crunching in the fresh snow that whispered along its banks, wishing for gloves to warm her callused hands and letting her mind wander.

A dragon.

Merill waited for the realization to hit her, for the shock and fear and awe to come, but she still felt as numb as her white left eye. She faintly remembered the bed-tales and stories Brelin had told them when she was a girl, of the days when dragons blotted the sun from the sky and ruled over man from the mountaintops, and how men had learned the tongue of dragons and shouted them out of Mundus forever, banishing their tyranny. Brelin didn’t know many Nord stories, but he had always believed it was important for Merill to know her own people’s stories and had offered them to her when he could. She had vague memories of a travelling wizard in Falkreath teaching them words out of the dragon tongue in exchange for a few coins, but they had long since faded from her mind. Nalimir had always sworn that this had never happened, and she often wondered if it was only a dream concocted by her adventurous mind. The dragons had always seemed like some sort of storybook beings that would always watch from the mountains in children’s heads, but were nothing more.

And yet she had seen one, stared into its eyes for what felt like hours.

It was impossible to tell the time of day through the thick clouds that darkened the sky as she rounded the final corner of the path and was met with the sprawling orange plains of Whiterun. Farms and holdfasts dotted the fields around the great walled city that rose up to a peak at a tall-tiered palace carved with dragon heads. Merill paused on the ridge, staring out at the plains. In comparison to the gritty chaos of Markarth, Whiterun, with its low timber-and-stone walls and its scattered farms, seemed almost quaint.

Farmers and guards cast her curious looks as she strode by, a short one-eyed Nord girl caked in dirt and blood, but she paid them little mind, crossing over a drawbridge and up a small slope to the wooden gates. The two guards there stopped her with wary eyes.

“City’s closed with the dragons about,” one said while the other scanned her ragged appearance suspiciously.

“But I need to go in,” she told them, puzzled. City’s closed? Who ever closed a city?

“Don’t make no difference to me,” he growled. “Go on, get out of here, forest rat.”

“I’m not forest rat,” Merill snarled, and the guards tensed, their hands straying to their weapons. Merill forced herself to calm. She was about to turn away when an idea struck her.

“I need to speak to Jarl Balgruuf,” Merill told them firmly, and the guards exchanged a glance.

“About what?” the second guard asked.

“The dragons.” Bewilderment blossomed on their faces.

“Were you…?”

“I just came from Helgen,” she said, gesturing to her haggard appearance. “The thing was flying this way, I thought I should warn him. Dunno if anybody else made it out alive,” she lied.

“I’ll take her up,” one guard muttered to the other, who nodded, and the first guard gestured for her to follow him through the gate.

Whiterun was a rambling city, a cobbled street winding up the hill and little timber houses with stained-glass windows perched crookedly along the path. Merill cast a sidelong glance at her guide. It would be easy to shove him and dash away, but there were too few people around, barely any places to hide.

“I can find the Jarl on my own,” she remarked, and the guard ignored her, leading her up through a plaza with a dead tree and starting up the broad stone stairs there.

“Go on,” he told her as they reached the palace’s bridge, leading straight to two tall wooden doors carved with dragons, their tails curling together and their eyes cruel. “Jarl Balgruuf’s just inside.”

Resigned, Merill pushed her way through the door, stepping quietly into Whiterun’s palace.