Chapter 2
‘You’re late,’ Torako said as the kits stopped under his tree.
‘Sorry, Master.’ Diia bowed. ‘Evading the Knights of the Rose proved more difficult than we anticipated. There were spellswords in their ranks, skilled with detection magic. We had no choice but to wait for their search parties to disperse before slipping through their ranks. Those men were well trained.’
‘Hmm,’ Torako frowned, jumping from the branch he was crouching on and landing in front of his students. ‘If we had known the Duke’s security measures were this stringent, we would have dispatched a regular unit instead. Given that you are standing here unharmed, however, I trust that all went well?’
‘The Duke is safe and sound, and the assassins after his head are all dead,’ Ambarro said proudly, then added as an afterthought, ‘Oh, and Harrow apparently killed the noble who sent them.’
Torako saw Harrow’s eye twitch in annoyance. Diia explained how they went through the mission in greater detail.
‘Nicely done,’ Torako nodded. ‘But next time, hide the bodies properly. Try to remove bloodstains if possible. If you can keep the alarm from being raised, you will find exfiltration much easier. Knowing you, Ambarro, you made a needless mess of your kill, didn’t you?’
‘Eh heh heh,’ Ambarro said sheepishly, scratching his head.
‘Ah, what’s done is done,’ Torako sighed.
‘How did your own mission go, Master?’ Diia asked politely.
‘All three targets eliminated,’ he replied, smiling. Duke Altamonte had been only a small part of their objective. The Council would not have dispatched a master to prevent a simple assassination. The reconstruction of Wayrest had drawn a ring of spymasters to the city, and it was they who supplied Lord Gerard Rousseau with the information and the manpower for the job. After tracking their handiwork – leaking intelligence to Houses opposed to the Empire, the disappearance of certain officials within the courts of High Rock – Grandmaster Takarro and Bengakhi had deduced that the spymasters were in the employ of the Thalmor.
Torako had been researching the targets for almost two weeks. It had been gruelling work. The spymasters knew their craft well, changing their routines on a daily basis and keeping virtually no exploitable habits. On the night he was to execute his plan, however, Lord Rousseau decided to make his own move. In truth, he had been nervous delegating the task of protecting the Duke to the three kits. This wasn’t as trivial as assassinating a crime boss or tracking down a murderer.
It seems like I needn’t have worried. The kits are still inexperienced… but they were well-trained, and they aren’t children any longer. Another year and they will be shinobi in full.
The swell of pride he felt as another generation of students stepped forth and took on the mantle of Shadeclaw was his favourite part of being a teacher. Torako took a moment to study the team, marvelling at how fast they had grown.
Ambarro was taller than him now, his black fur messy and windswept. The white stripe common to his family had grown to trace his forehead. There was a wild energy in his hazel eyes. His father’s rokushakubo hung on his back, six feet of enchanted verawood. Torako had to admit that the weapon suited him. It still required skill and finesse to use properly, but the wielder did not need to be as subtle as one was with daggers and short blades.
Diia stood close to him, her brown fur brushed and layered. She had grown out of her bashful schoolgirl stage, but still went slightly pink in the ears whenever she made physical contact with Ambarro. A brace of five kunai was belted onto her waist, but Torako knew that she had three other blades up her left sleeve and in each boot. Her right sleeve hid an armband holster of senbon. Ambarro had once joked that she was a ‘sharp dresser’, drawing groans from the entire class.
Harrow stood slightly further away from the other two, a fact that wasn’t lost on Torako. Just as slender as Diia and still the quietest out of the three, he kept one hand rested on Whisper as he raised his head to the wind. Rendanshu had not changed the fact that his hearing was not as sensitive as a Po’ Tun’s, so he made up for it with constant vigilance. He no longer kept his hair in a topknot, and the silken black strands fell to his neck and the sides of his brow, covering the tapered points of his ears.
Torako saw all three of them look at him expectantly and realised he had been standing there for five minutes as they waited for his orders. It’s been a while since I led a unit of my own into the field.
‘All right,’ he cleared his throat. ‘Time we were on our way.’
‘Straight back to Tsukikage, Master?’ Ambarro asked, a hint of disappointment in his voice.
‘Yes. Why, do you feel like staying?’
‘Well, not really, but…’ Ambarro grimaced. ‘We don’t get to spend much time away from the village. Wayrest was a fun place. Diia and I had lunch along the banks of the Iliac Bay just this afternoon. I’ve never seen water so clear.’
‘You are not here to have fun. Wait until you are granted leave.’ Torako’s voice softened. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be able to experience plenty of the outside world when you become urotsuki-nin. Take comfort in knowing that you’ve already seen more than most people do in a lifetime. Now let’s go.’
‘Yes, Master,’ Ambarro said glumly and fell in line behind him with his teammates.
The city of Wayrest was quite close to the Dragontail Mountains. Torako led the kits from there to the border, where they crossed into the Reach, and proceeded down those mountains to the foot of the Jeralls. Ordinary travellers would find the steep terrain difficult to navigate, which was exactly why he chose that path. Shinobi preferred to move unseen, even when they were not being pursued.
It took them a little over two weeks to reach the foot of the Jeralls. Shadeclaws travelled light, carrying only small pouches that they could conceal under their tunics. They were running out of rations by the time they neared the seven leagues of land near Mount Furiya.
‘Should we stop for supplies?’ Diia said, looking at their meagre stock of dried meat. ‘There’s a settlement in the area we could trade with.’
Torako frowned, rubbing his chin. The settlement she was talking about was an unnamed collection of huts occupied by a ragtag group of Nords. Because of the presence of these settlers, wildlife around the area was scarce.
‘Trading would indeed be the easiest way to get food, but no,’ Torako said firmly. ‘Simple hunger is no reason to risk making contact with outsiders. Besides, we can easily function at full capacity for at least ten days without any nourishment. We should reach Tsukikage in five; let us restrain ourselves for the moment. If need be, we can hunt.’
‘As you say, Master.’ They did not speak of the settlement until they came within half a mile of the huts.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Ambarro said, stopping. ‘I smell blood.’
Torako held up a hand and the unit came to a halt. He gave the air a long sniff.
‘You’re right,’ he murmured, disturbed. ‘Not only that, but the usual sounds of the settlers’ daily activities are absent. I don’t hear any livestock, or children playing. Normally I would suggest that they left to find a better environment to make their home in, but if there’s the scent of blood in the air…’
‘I smell nothing,’ Harrow said, looking frustrated with his inferior senses. ‘But I can still see that something is amiss. There’s no smoke coming from most of the chimneys. Only the central building has got a fire going.’
‘Do we investigate, Master?’ Diia looked to him for instruction, as did the two boys.
Torako chewed his lip. Signs of violence. A raid by one of the local warlords? Implausible, but there were some of them brave and foolish enough to come this close to Tsukikage. Usually their men abandon them halfway throughout the journey, leaving them alone, half-dead from cold and starvation even before the sentries pick them off, but…
The settlement couldn’t have fallen to a lone madman. Infighting, perhaps? The Nords living here were not violent folk, but desperation can drive even the most peaceful of men to murder.
‘Form up,’ Torako decided. ‘We infiltrate via the east.’
The four shinobi dropped to low stances, their feet leaving no prints as they dashed across a snowy mountain ridge and onto a cliff overlooking the settlement. As they approached the hovels, Torako and Harrow stopped, their eyes widening. Reaching out, they pulled the other two back.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ambarro hissed, shooting Harrow an annoyed glare as he dragged him back by an arm.
‘Life Detection spells,’ Harrow explained. ‘You sensed it too, right, Master?’
Torako nodded. ‘Can you tell which kind?’
The elven youth frowned. ‘Sorry, Master. I’m not that attuned to the arcane energies yet.’
‘As I thought. Don’t worry, expertise will come over time.’ Torako closed his eyes and focused, tapping as stealthily as he could into the web of Magicka in front of him.
‘Range… a half-sphere with a radius of two hundred feet. The streams of Magicka are tight; there will be no slipping in between them even if Diia and Ambarro are skilled enough to pinpoint their position. Functions via… heartbeat detection. In that case, the solution is simple.’ Torako was glad to see that the kits already understood.
They sat down in the lotus position, one hand on their laps and the other clenched in a fist with two fingers extended skywards. Taking several deep breaths, the shinobi concentrated a silent kiai around their hearts, slowing and eventually stopping the organs. At the same time, they channelled another stream of ki into their blood vessels, allowing material exchange to continue.
Torako was confident that he could keep it up for at least three hours, but the best the kits could probably manage right now was about twenty minutes. Still plenty of time for a reconnaissance run.
‘Ready?’
‘My sides hurt,’ Ambarro complained.
‘Deal with it, dunce,’ Harrow snapped, wheezing slightly.
‘Ready, Master,’ Diia said, massaging her abdomen.
‘Then move out,’ Torako commanded, lowering his voice to standard operations volume – inaudible beyond ten feet. The shinobi leapt from the cliff, fell for a brief three seconds, and landed silently on a snowdrift below.
The first few huts they passed were all empty, their doors hanging ajar. Torako saw pools of blood on the snow. Not completely frozen yet, which meant that it was spilt not long ago.
They came across the first bodies as they proceeded deeper into the settlement. The settlers had tried to put up a fight. A skinny man in rags clutched a pitchfork in his hands, the lower half of his body missing completely. A cursory examination of his torso revealed scorch marks. More evidence that their attackers had at least one mage in their number.
Torako’s ear pricked up as he heard very faint voices. Of all four of them, Ambarro had the purest Po’ Tun bloodline and thus the sharpest senses. ‘Central building,’ the black-furred kit said. ‘Looks like people are gathered in the town hall.’
‘Close in,’ Torako said, directing the unit to the window, where they could eavesdrop on the occupants.
‘I have to admit, I wouldn’t have thought of venturing so high up into the mountains. Heard the warlords here were tough folk,’ a female voice was saying. She had a Cyrodilic accent.
‘Tough? Ha! Do you know why those bums refuse to set foot in these parts? Apparently, this section of the Jeralls is supposed to be haunted by some manner of ghosts. I brought silver blades with me and spent an entire week brushing up my banishment magic just in case, but one whole mile into the area and there’s nothing here but these snivelling N’wah! Speaking of which… ach, no gold on this one as well.’ The second voice had a distinct Morrowind accent. Balmora, Torako hazarded a guess.
‘At least their food stores are well-stocked. We can stay here and rest up for a while before we move higher.’ A third voice. Valenwood, judging from the way he drew out his vowels.
‘How much further do we have to hike? We can stave off the cold and the wind easily enough with magic, but all this climbing is killing my legs,’ the fourth voice whined. High Rock, though Torako couldn’t discern the finer regional inflections.
‘We’ll have to keep going for at least another week by my reckoning,’ the fifth voice replied, his gravelly voice and snubbed consonants suggesting he was another denizen of Morrowind. ‘The treasure trove is at least eleven more miles to the northwest, around another three thousand feet higher in altitude.’
The shinobi exchanged alarmed glances. That was almost the exact location of Tsukikage no Sato.
‘The treasure’s on a flat-topped mountain, right? Can’t believe there’s actual even ground so high up in the Jeralls.’
That confirmed it. They were heading for Mount Furiya.
One Imperial, two Dunmer, one Bosmer, one Breton, if my deduction is correct. A band of rogue mages, by the sound of it.
Torako concentrated, extending tendrils of arcane energy cautiously inside the hall, trying to feel out the occupants’ Magicka signatures. Yes… the Imperial is a versatile spellcaster, but has the least Magicka capacity of the bunch. The pair of Dunmer are dangerous, but not on the level of Morrowind master wizards yet. The Bosmer and the Breton both have extremely high Magicka capacities, but their synaptic network indicates a lack of training… wait.
There was a sixth signature, very faint, huddled in the midst of the five mages. Torako pushed a little harder, and the presence bristled immediately at his touch.
‘Found you,’ a sixth voice exclaimed triumphantly. Torako felt the traces of energy expand and bloat, revealing a Magicka capacity larger than all the five other mages combined.
Retreat, he signalled immediately with hand signs. The shinobi flitted away from the window half a second before it blew up, debris littering the hole in the wall where the frame had been.
The silhouette of six robed mages appeared in the smoke, their hands crackling with various elemental forces. Their leader raised his head, and Torako realised that he was a Nord. Nords did not put much stock in spellwork nowadays, but the few that did study and master magic were as formidable as they came. Judging from the man’s Magicka signature, he was no exception.
‘Knew something was off,’ the Nord battlemage said, a blizzard coming to life and swirling around him. ‘Hmm. You fellows don’t have heartbeats, but you’re not undead either. My looking-glass would have revealed you otherwise. Care to tell me exactly what you might be before you die?’
‘Weapons free,’ Torako said coldly.
The shinobi entered a juji cross formation, Torako at the front, Diia and Ambarro at the sides, Harrow at the back. The formation would work the best in open combat – Torako was the most skilled and experienced, meaning that he could take the brunt of the enemy assault. Diia’s ice spikes and telekinetic bladework was most effective at medium range, as was Ambarro’s fire. They could provide cover for the rest of the unit. Harrow’s lightning was flexible enough to maintain sufficient lethality throughout long range, so he could bombard their foes from a distance.
Torako took the initiative, opening the attack with a smoke pellet thrown at their feet. As the grey cloud enveloped them, Harrow spat three lightning bolts from his palm. The first bolt guttered uselessly off the Nord’s ward, but the next two did not impact their opponents directly. The lightning split off into squibs as it hit the snow, sparking off the six mages. Torako smiled as he saw the Imperial and the Bosmer wince. Good work, kit. Now we know which ones have the weakest defences.
Reaching into his pouch, he spun and hurled nine shuriken in a fan in front of him. A green and turquoise aura surrounded the mages and the darts bounced off their Flesh spells.
One of the Dunmer sneered, taunting them. ‘Throwing pebbles at us now?’
Torako gestured and the shuriken glowed. The mages looked down just in time to see the runes etched on the metal stars erupt in bursts of fire and lightning.
It required supreme concentration and reflexes to defend oneself against mundane and arcane attacks at once, something the leftmost mage lacked. The Bosmer shrieked and fell, his legs charred and blackened below the thighs. Ambarro finished him off with a fireball to the face.
Disperse, Torako signalled as the enemy began a counterattack. The unit spread out from the juji formation and ran circles around the mages, using their speed to their advantage. At full sprint, a shinobi who had consumed the Pale Flask could easily manage eighty miles per hour for upwards of thirty seconds.
The Imperial rubbed her eyes in disbelief. ‘What the-’
The mages shot spells at the blurred figures whirling around them, cursing as they missed. The Nord kept a calm head and shot a wall of fire into the shinobi’s path right as they reached the town hall, forcing them to turn and face him.
The Dunmer raised their hands and a mass of lightning and sleet spun towards the shinobi, large enough to cover half of the settlement. Cunning, using size to counter our speed.
Torako clenched his teeth as he erected a wedge-shaped ward, keeping the storm at bay.
‘Diia!’ Ambarro cried over the wind, extending a hand. An orb of fire expanded in his palm.
‘Understood!’ Diia replied, covering his hand with hers. There was a red glow, then a white light. Together the two kits threw a flashing globe into the middle of the enemy, who immediately raised their own wards. Torako squinted, examining the spell. A sphere of ice encasing a fireball. Strange combination.
Then he saw the cluster of senbon that Diia had forced inside the ice with telekinesis and smiled. Very clever.
A powerful fireball damaged opponents in two ways – heat, obviously, but also the force of the explosion. Both could be defended against with wards from magic, as those kept Magicka and Magicka-infused substances from passing through.
That was where Diia’s senbon came in. As Ambarro’s fireball detonated, the rapidly expanding air turned the throwing needles into shrapnel, sending them flying at speeds far greater than possible if she had thrown them by hand. The Dunmer didn’t even have time to blink. The senbon ripped them into pieces.
Torn limbs and chunks of flesh rained from the air. The Imperial’s eyes shut for an instant as blood splattered her face. Taking advantage of the distraction, Harrow cast a bolt of lightning at the ground directly in front of the mage. His body shimmered and disappeared into the blue stream. Within a millisecond, he reappeared in front of the Imperial, a hand on the hilt of his sword.
Torako nodded, pleased with his prowess. When Harrow first started riding lightning, he could only manage to move two to three feet at most. Now, after almost four years of practice, he had expanded his range to thirty feet, allowing for what was essentially short-range teleportation to any target in his line of sight.
Sasayaki made an almost inaudible hum as Harrow drew it from its scabbard in an iai. The chokuto swept a silver arc across the air as it took the Imperial’s hand off at the wrist, then continued up and passed through her neck like a hot knife through butter. The droplets of blood slid off the frictionless material of the blade, leaving no stains. Sasayaki indeed. Tusok-ri was truly a master craftsman.
Continuing with his motion, Harrow whirled towards the Breton, sword flashing in a straight line towards his torso. The mage proved himself an apt fencer, however. Drawing a Dwemer shortsword from his waist, he saw through the feint and parried as the kit swung at his head, deflecting Whisper at an angle. The two exchanged three stances and half a dozen blows, then Harrow disengaged and fell back to the safety of his unit.
Seeing an opening, the Breton thrust his hand forward and conjured a flaming projectile of… molten rock from the Deadlands? Torako thought, shocked.
Wards would do little against an attack like that. Torako threw up his hand, forcing the air in front of Harrow to crystallise. Cold was easy in the Jeralls, but gathering moisture was not. He almost sagged as the ice wall rose.
The bolt of lava ate through the wall in a matter of seconds and zoned in on Harrow, tracking his movements and coming back whenever he dodged. Out of options, the elven shinobi rode lightning once more, flickering away in a flash of energy. The projectile almost seemed sentient. It reversed direction and headed for Torako instead.
‘Run, little kitties, run,’ the Breton cackled, then Diia and Ambarro burst up from the thick snow behind him, having burrowed underneath him like moles. Ambarro swung his bo at the crook of the man’s leg, shattering his kneecap, and Diia slid her kunai under his chin and slit his throat.
Torako blinked the spots out of his eye as the Breton’s spell fell apart, then turned in alarm as he heard a deep roar. Harrow had not paid attention to aim as he fled the lava, and his lightning bolt had brought him right in front of the Nord.
The man’s rage at the death of his comrades seemed to fuel his magic. The blizzard swirled around him, stronger than ever, rendering close quarters combat impossible. Harrow flung a barrage of shuriken at him but the blizzard swept them away, even sending a couple of them back, scoring a gash on his cheek.
With no other recourse, Harrow fell back to lightning. The bolts of energy were fast enough to pierce the shroud of icy wind, but unfortunately they lacked the power to kill. Riding lightning twice in rapid succession had drained Harrow’s Magicka reserves. The Nord didn’t even seem to feel the attacks. He staggered backwards slightly each time the lightning made contact, but that only seemed to enrage him more. Uttering another roar, he marched forward, slow and implacable.
Harrow shot five more lightning bolts at him, then concentrated what remained of his Magicka into a steady stream and sprayed it at the Nord. Torako ran as fast as he could towards the two, Ambarro and Diia close behind.
The Nord stopped a few feet away, glaring. Harrow’s lightning sputtered and died, then the magical wind picked up in speed and sent a hunk of ice the size of a pumpkin smashing into him. The kit let out a pained yell and fell backwards, thrown off his feet.
Seeing his student wounded made Torako’s blood boil, but that was no reason to throw caution to the wind.
He gathered strength in his thigh muscles, then leapt thirty feet into the air, high enough to look down from an acute angle and lock onto the centre of the blizzard with pinpoint precision. In any storm, the slowest winds are in the eye.
Torako twisted his body and dove down, somersaulting one hundred and eighty degrees upright as he fell safely past the gusts of air surrounding him and the Nord. He slammed his boots into the mage’s shoulders as he dropped, transferring all of his weight into the man’s back.
The Nord screamed as his spine snapped in three different places. Torako put him out of his misery with the last of his momentum, ramming his kunai through the top of his skull.
The blizzard faded. Ambarro and Diia ran towards Harrow, who was already getting up.
‘Are you all right?’ Torako asked, Regeneration magic lighting up his fingers.
‘I’m fine, Master,’ Harrow coughed, rubbing his bruised chest. ‘Apologies. My lightning is still too weak. I shall step up my training regimens.’
‘Do not focus solely on power,’ Torako chided. ‘Even at its weakest, lightning magic is excellent for distractions.’
‘With respect, Master, I am aware of that,’ Harrow said, a hint of exasperation colouring his tone. ‘However, the electric current I am capable of producing as of now is has insufficient charge to eliminate a target reliably, especially one armoured or protected with magic.’
Torako tapped his chin as he looked at the kit, and for a while all was silent.
‘Then perhaps it’s time you learned more advanced lightning techniques,’ he said, resisting the urge to grin as he saw Harrow’s eyes light up immediately.
‘Diia, Ambarro, head back to Tsukikage without us. If he asks, tell the Grandmaster that we are headed for Cloud Top.’
‘Cloud Top? Where’s that?’ Ambarro asked, frowning.
‘Further down the Jeralls, close to the city of Chorrol. Don’t worry, Takarro-ri will understand. We should return in two weeks.’
Ambarro and Diia’s backs receded as they headed north, picking their way back to the shinobi village through the ice and rocks. Torako waved them goodbye, then turned to Harrow, who seemed to be trying his utmost not to smile in anticipation.
‘You seem eager,’ he remarked.
‘I am always eager to learn, Master,’ Harrow said, bowing. ‘Thank you.’
‘Before we set off, let’s recover our shuriken. I also need a moment with the oilstone. Your Whisper might not ever need to be sharpened or honed, but normal kunai aren’t quite as durable. I’m fairly sure the last mage’s skull scraped some lines into the blade what with all the protruding bits of bone.’
‘And the corpses?’
‘Scavenge what little gold they may be carrying, then leave them for the wolves and the vultures,’ Torako said dismissively. ‘We have no use for them.’
Harrow was silent as he picked up his shuriken one by one and slipped them into his sleeve holsters.
‘Something on your mind?’ Torako probed.
‘Master, excluding the local warlords, this is the first time in almost a century that armed individuals have come this close to the village. Should we not be concerned?’
‘It is noteworthy, yes,’ Torako mused. ‘Especially what they said about treasure. Shadeclaws have spread and enforced the rumour of Mount Furiya being a haunted, desolate wasteland for millennia. It’s possible that someone is trying to undo our work… of course, urban legends and myths often need little instigation to spread. Since these seven leagues of the Jeralls are officially marked as unexplored land by the Empire, it’s possible that this talk of treasure on the peak is simply the product of Tamriellian imagination.’
‘This matter needs to be investigated.’
‘Yes, but not by us,’ Torako said, straightening as he polished the last few notches off his kunai. ‘Ready for your lesson, kit?’
Harrow’s expression brightened. ‘Of course, Master.’
‘Then follow me,’ Torako chuckled, sheathing his dagger and beckoning.
The pair took what food they could from the newly emptied settlement, then set off back down the mountains to the southwest, making for the Colovian Highlands.
Comments
Don´t tell it to Ser Gregor Clegane...
xD
Don´t tell it to Ser Gregor Clegane...
xD
This is on you, Karver-jo~!