The Ghosts of Bruma

I.

Thunder rolled down the Jerall Mountains and for a moment the earth seemed to shift like snakes. Falkir struggled to keep his footing. Above the jagged peaks he could see the storm clouds crackle and spark, though the sky in every other direction was clear. The Bosmer steadied himself as the echoing cries of the Nord Tongues reached his ears. In such a moment, he thought philosophically, the wisest thing would be to consider the prudence of running very, very quickly in the opposite direction. Too bad Falkir was not wise.

Drawing upon Memory he flicked his hand into the air, sending a green light high above the Aldmeri lines. Well behind him the generals were already preparing and his keen ears could detect the march of Altmer feet. Falkir glanced around him; from his vantage point he would have a splendid view of the battle, and ample opportunity for his bow. Alas that he would not be able to test his blade, being so very far from the front lines.

It was then he heard the baying of wolves.

II.

The Nords came screaming down the slopes of the mountain, roaring in bloodlust with their axes thirsty for Elven blood.

Sulindrel considered them stoically as he ordered the fifth phalanx into position. There was really no sense of strategy in the Northern mind and for not the last time he considered the alleged successes of Tiber Septim, the false-god . No doubt the present-day warchiefs thought themselves subtle gathering the last Tongues of Skyrim, as if in myth-echo of the Battle of Old Hroldan. How much, he wondered, watching the Nords throw themselves against his troops, were those successes of Talos-the-Liar really the work of Zurin Arctus? The legends claimed Arctus met Hjalti Early-Beard later but…legends were notoriously deceptive. The Altmer lines were holding and suddenly there were Khajiit soldiers flanking the Nords almost without effort, descending from the hills lining the route to the abandoned Akaviri temple. Sulindrel flicked bits of dirt from under his nails as the barbarians were cut down on all sides.

As the Battlemages unleashed oceans of fire Sulindrel turned from the battle. “Alert me when they’ve retreated,” he told his aid, and made his way into his tent.

III.

Night fell hard on Bruma, and Kaasha slunk through the city’s streets hoping to find a bottle of something stronger than the goat’s piss the Nords called mead. Her search, so far, had been fruitless.

Outside the walls the Elves were piling up the Nord dead for a pyre that could be seen all the way to the Imperial City. That was the point – General Sulindrel made it known he would personally breach the Imperial lines once he had crushed the last army of the Northmen. The War had gone badly for the Nords, despite all their ferocity. In the early days they were a terror. King Hrogan One-Eye had led berserkers in half the battles in Skyrim, Hammerfell, and High Rock and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Thalmor forces. Kaasha remembered his skin being peeled away by Daedroths not even a year ago, for the delight of the Queen. She understood his bone-walker served her still.

Climbing the walls Kaasha nodded to one of the Khajiit guards. Slipping into darksight she watched the Altmer grunts moving the endless corpses. She noted there were no Arkayans preparing the dead, and a krin pierced her face: such a nasty surprise for the ragged remains of Ysgrammor’s line.

Leaving the walls she headed for the ruins of the nearest inn, supposing even goat-piss was better than water. She wondered if she would find Falkir there – he had likely drunk it all by now.

Perhaps it was her preoccupation with drink or her thoughts of Falkir; perhaps it was the weariness of a long war. But despite her darksight she had not seen the soldiers moving Khajiit among the growing piles of the dead.

IV.

Falkir coughed, and no small amount of phlegm and blood flew from his mouth. He aimed for one of his Nord captors, hoping against hope that the Nord would have the common decency to just kill him. But the bloody phlegm landed short and the Bosmer had to endure a longer life tethered to a pole, surrounded by a mixture of blood, feces, and empty mead bottles – the Nords delighted in target practice.

“Maybe if I yell loudly,” he shouted. “I can give away your position! I’m sure General Sulindrel – you know, the Butcher of Bravil? – will send many Thalmor to rend your fragrant hides. Maybe he’ll let me make my famous Nord stew. Very tasty but reminds me too much of dog…”

A fist came out of nowhere and Falkir was blessed with unconsciousness. Not the best solution, he thought before the dark took him, but his second choice.

*

He was never sure if it was a nightmare, a moment of wakefulness, or just a hope of a quick death, but Falkir remembered Secunda rising in the distance – an ivory backdrop for a circle of Nords around a fire. They were chanting…shouting...and seemed almost to be swaying. There was a guttural noise, a kind of laugh, a tall horned shadow eclipsing Secunda. Consciousness flew from him then.

*

The screaming of Nords woke him.

They were breaking camp though dawn was a full hour away; warriors in leather and fur, hefting their axes, swords and bludgeons. One of the larger ones, an enormous blonde, was shouting orders. He gave the Bosmer a smile that screamed of horrible things and made his way over. “Did you enjoy your nap, elf?” came the mocking voice.

“Well, I would have preferred a bed-mate but Nords are so ugly. And how do you tell the women from the men? Oh, right, there is no difference…”

The blow did not come, but a laugh did. “Today, elf,” the Nord told him. “Today you will see the turning of the tide. Today we will avenge the millions you Thalmor have murdered.”

“I doubt I’ll be seeing much from this pole.”

A blade severed his bonds. “Go,” said the Nord, his voice deepening, his hair darkening. “And tell your masters that Death is coming for them. Today.”

Falkir ran. Very, very quickly.

V.

The Nords attacked at dawn and Sulindrel had to admit that they almost very nearly accomplished their own perfect defeat within the first two minutes of the battle. They attacked from two sides, this time – one group following the same route from the temple, another coming east from Gnoll Mountain. Neither group was very large and Sulindrel almost felt pity unleashing his Khajiit archers on their forces. A part of him had been hoping for something more, some small bit of that famous Nordic spirit, but he supposed the Thalmor had done their job too well. There would be no glorious end to race of Ysgrammor, just a large pile of blood and viscera.

It was about this moment that the third force struck them…from behind.

At any other time Sulindrel might have felt admiration, grudging of course. He might have commended the Nords on the stealth of their attack, the surprising ease with which they had moved their force without the Aldmer seeing them. That night he would have executed every guard on their apparent route. But Sulindrel felt none of these things. What he felt was a sharp chill, beginning at the base of his spine and racing up to raise the hairs on his neck. He very nearly shivered. Turning to face the horde he supposed it was a completely natural response. Shock and fear were completely viable reactions on seeing five hundred werewolves racing directly at you.

Sulindrel drew his sword and ran screaming towards his transcendence.

VI.

Falkir did not make it in time to warn his Thalmor masters; he never saw them again, in fact. No, instead he ran. It was surprising, he thought, how quickly he could run with the sound of battle at his back. He had never shirked his duty before, had certainly never deserted: he was good Thalmor scout, and had always been. Certainly he may have disappeared into the shadows, offering support through well-placed arrows fired from invisible hiding spots. But Falkir was certain his brand of heroism was not going to be helpful today. So he ran until he didn’t think it was possible to run any more, and found that it was quite possible indeed. The sounds of slaughter echoing down the mountain were a tremendous inspiration.

The insanely wonderful thing about war was that for the small folk, life always went on. He found a tiny inn overlooking the Niben valley, with a warm hearth and (almost) fresh ale. And almost no one was staying there. The interior was dark enough to hide his face, the food was hot, and the only other boarder was a Dunmer in netch armor who was more interested in the fireplace than a sweaty Bosmer. Falkir drowned himself in ale, wishing that Kaasha were with him – a little pleasant company would be nice after saving his own skin.

It was the change in his skin that he noticed first after glimpsing Masser through the window that night. A funny thing, Nords; their sense of revenge was almost poetic. As his body shifted he reflected on the irony that he had said Nord flesh tasted like dog – and he was going to die as a dog. He could almost hear the blonde Nord laughing.

But then the Dunmer raised his hands and Falkir was wreathed in flame.

VII.

The moons rose over the silence of Bruma.

In the terror of the Nord advance the Thalmor had resurrected the previous day’s dead – including their own troops – as bonewalkers. Something had gone wrong…perhaps the Tongues were cannier than Sulindrel thought…and they had turned on their masters. What followed was slaughter on a level Kaasha had never seen, or imagined. The dead and the wolves tore through both Aldmer and Nord lines leaving nothing living; they stormed the walls of Bruma, clawing and crawling upon each other to breach the city and it had only been a matter of time. They poured thousands of arrows into the horde and still they came. In the end, the Thalmor ranks broke. Maybe the Tongues weren’t so canny, after all.

She couldn’t remember how she ended up in the inn; they had barricaded the door, held their hands over the ears against the shrieking in the street. There they huddled in the darkness under tables or behind the bar; praying nothing looked through the windows. Only a few had made it: a pair of young Nord women popular among the officers, a handful of children rescued from Sulindrel’s pogram (she never knew how), and an old Argonian wishing he had gone south.

The hours inevitably gave way to an eerie, haunted quiet. Every creak in the wood flooring drew inhaled breath and muffled screams. Ivory moonlight streamed through the windows, pooling like milk on the inn’s floor – they pulled away from it. How long, Kaasha wondered, until they found enough courage to open the door? She wouldn’t be the one to do it; she never wanted to walk into that world again. The inn was dark, yes, and filled with fear – but maybe if they stayed there long enough the Thalmor and Imperials and Nords and Daedra and gods-knew-what-else world would destroy themselves, and after that, it might be safe to leave. One of the children whimpered against the woman holding her, and Kaasha thought of all the inspiring Altmer speeches about Thalmor supremacy; speeches about mysticism, art, and the inferiority of humans holding them back. A vision of Khajiit bonewalkers flashed through her mind. If only Ra’zhiin and Vaaj-na were here, she lamented. If only they knew.

The door handle moved, and three sharp knocks rang against the wood.

The children scuttled as quietly as they could to the women and the Argonian gave a plaintive whine. The knocking came again. “The horde has moved south,” came a gravelly voice.

Her hands were trembling as she stood up, palms sweating as she silently loosed her blade. Knocking, and her footsteps. Her mind was reeling, muscles clenched against her impossible movement. What are you doing?, she screamed inside herself. She saw her hand reaching for the barricade. Behind her the other survivors made their whispered pleas of denial.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” growled the voice.

“This one knows,” she responded, and began shifting the furniture.

When the door opened a lone figure with red eyes stared back at her. “I don’t think they’ll be back,” said the Dunmer. “But there might be a few stragglers in the city. We’d best get moving.”

A ragged band of survivors left Bruma that night, a line of ghosts painted in moonlight. As they stepped around the corpses, avoided the streams of gore she watched the Dunmer in netch armor. His face was wrapped in scarves, but tufts of red hair hinted in the creases. “This one is Kaasha,” she said, though not sure that it mattered.

“Telvanni Kalas Sul Saren,” he told her. “Kalas is shorter.”

At a bend in the road the Niben valley opened before them. In the distance they could see the Imperial City awash in Masser’s light. It was surrounded by fire.

“It is a strange thing,” Kalas said without looking at her. “To find a Thalmor soldier protecting refugees.”

Kaasha swallowed hard and remembered the Altmer speeches, the waves of Khajiit dead, the silence of the inn. “Maybe the world is changing,” she said at last.

“Yes,” the Dunmer replied. “Change is coming,”