Eye of the Wind – Ch. 7 – 6: By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  • As the quiet of the gorge reasserted itself, followed by the sluggish rattling of chilly grasshoppers, we prowled the camp, recovering arrows and shifting the dead from the road over to the camp's bonfire.  There we laid the dead to be consumed by flame.  Our last corpse was a man Derkeethus pierced through the mouth with an arrow.  It managed to plow through the back of his thin, metal helmet, and I had to give up recovering the ammunition.  Instead, I broke the shaft and tossed the arrow aside.

    "How's your shoulder," Derkeethus asked, remembering the arrow I took at the beginning of the battle.

    "It doesn't hurt," I replied, then looking at the wound, was surprised to see the flash had knitted neatly back together, leaving a dark, sap-colored scar.

    With a frown, I hefted the dead man's shoulders while Derk seized his legs, and I gazed at his face and thought of the woman I slew not hours before.  Pulling on the Argonian's will to force my right arm to hold up the corpse and keep the poison at bay, I realized I respected the female bandit in her last moments.  She had asked for an end rather than demand mine.  We had been, for a moment, on the same level of existence each defending our own lives.  However...

    "There's no respect in running from your companions," I muttered, more to myself.

    "Sometimes you have no choice.  And those may not have been her companions.  You can't know  why she decided to run, and it's too late to ask," Derkeethus said with a scowl.  "Not everyone who runs away is a coward."

    "I never said she was a coward.  But she did abandon people who were in trouble and who aided her in a time of need."  We hefted the body up onto the fire, and I felt my friend recoil from the connection, hiding a memory of which I caught the briefest of glimpses.

    "Who said they aided her?" he uttered at last, but we were both silent for a while after that as we mounted the horses and continued on down the road.

    I thought to set fire to that camp, burning it to the ground, but there was no time and not enough fuel.  So, we left, I still sitting astride Eater-of Burrs, constantly nudging him back onto the road.  The morning sky waned quickly into early afternoon, clear and blue.  I felt Derkeethus' weariness as I continued to draw on his strength to keep my mind and body belonging to myself.

    "If you would hand me back that heart, the poison probably wouldn't be so bad," I ventured.  "It might actually go to sleep."   Somewhere, I thought this was a very bad idea, but I couldn't seem to stop myself from asking.

    "You seem to be doing just fine, now," he said skeptically.

    "Yes, but with your help.  You're tired, Derk.  I can feel it.  Don't deny it."  A sly, somewhat sultry tone had crept into my voice, unintended and unwelcome.  He was starting to waver in his decision.

    "You promise to keep it in the satchel?  I don't want you touching it."

    "Yes," I said in a sigh that almost came out like a hiss.  I turned to look at him, and my gaze burned into his.  With a painstaking slowness, he unbuckled the satchel from his belt.

    We began to trot uphill as he caught up with me, holding it out reluctantly.  My fingers ached to feel the beating of the heart once more, and I reached out with expectant hands.   Nael jerked away, veering off the road with a fearful neigh.  Derkeethus reigned her in a little, guiding her back to the road.  Doubt crept into his features.

    "Maybe this isn't a good idea," he said.  I glared at him, eyeing the pouch with the heart, already beating frantically, with a look of unadulterated hunger.

    "Please," I pleaded, forcing that stare onto him.  He flinched and a number of emotions and thoughts raced through his mind all at once.  Seizing that moment of confusion, I reach out far enough to almost fall out of the saddle and snatched the pouch from him.  Derk looked back at me, lost and swept away by some thought.  Surging Burrs forward before he could react, I exulted in the feeling of the beating heart in the pouch.  A sigh whistled through my teeth, and my friend's will was shoved away rudely.

    "What have I done..."  I heard him mutter to himself, then Nael cantered to keep up with me, but I only moved faster up the hill.  The heart drummed beneath my right hand, and magicka seeped through the leather of the pouch to greet it.  Burning raced up my arm through my shoulder and into my chest.

    Somewhere inside, I was screaming.

    Our impromptu race pushed us to the top of the hill, Derkeethus still trying to push Nael to catch up with me, though she now had no desire to come near me at all.  I passed an intersection of the road, following the sign pointing straight ahead to Rorikstead.  

    Behind me, Nael reared and screamed as an arrow plinked off the cobbles before her hooves.  Derkeethus leapt off the horse in a flash and raced towards the archer who was knocking another arrow.  The archer whistled shrilly and flitting my gaze to the left, I saw two other fur-clad men scrambling to their feet from piles of hay.

    An empty bottle clinked down the hill as they rushed at us, and hurriedly I dismounted. shoving the pouch down the front of my tunic without thinking.  My foot was caught in the stirrup, and I hopped lamely as Burr's danced about in fear.  Tugging as hard as I could, I only succeeded in getting the stirrup more tangled.  Panick flooded my body as I frantically struggled.  The briarheart beat madly against my sternum, and distantly, I felt its spines pricking my skin with liquid fire.

    Derkeethus turned, having dispatched the archer up on the rock, and swore.  His scrambling was too slow and the men caught up with me.  I ducked as a young man snarled and sliced the air over my head.  His dagger slashed into the side of the horse, severing the stirrup and frightening the beast away.  

    The metal of the stirrup clanked rhythmically as I dodged another swipe, drawing my sword in the same moment.  I parried his next blow, sending him staggering backwards on the cobbles as his comrade swung at me with a mace.  

    Fire burned in my blood as the world resolved into crystalline clarity.  Slipping under the swing, watching the man seem to move in slow motion, I turned and drew my blade across his neck with tremendous force.  My teeth were gritted and bared as I felt the resistance of bone, then, suddenly, the blade was clear and the man's head tumbled to the ground.  Shocked, I watched the blood vessels in the man's neck pour blood onto the road, forgetting everything around me.

    The rabid beating of the briarheart brought me back to reality, and I stared at the young man wielding the dagger.  He stared back at me in horror and started to run.  Releasing a feral growl, I threw my sword after him, watching it lodge into his back and send him to the ground.

    Derkeethus at last made it down the rock, the skirmish having only lasted a couple of minutes.  Blood spattered my tunic and armor.  My hands were covered in it.  I could feel it drying on my face.  Some had even gotten in one of my eyes and the world burned with a salty tint of red.  My breath came out in a light wheeze as I stood there panting before yanking my sword out of the young man's body.

    His face was a study in terror and pain, forever etched there in his last moment of death.  Fluid thundered in my ears and all I could hear was the ring of battle.

    "I've never seen you fight like that before," Derk said quietly.  Distantly, a wet thump echoed up the hill as the head finally met its resting place.  As I crouched to clean my blade on the grass, my foot clanked.  The stirrup was still wrapped around my boot.  I pulled it off and tossed it away.  It landed with a desultory thunk.

    "Henny..." Derk ventured, cautiously approaching me.  I stared at him with wide eyes before I turned and vomited on the gravel.  My stomach clenched as the briarheart spines probed my flesh, flooding my system with more poison.  I scrabbled at my tunic, trying to pry the pouch away from my skin, but it wouldn't budge and both hands fought my will.

    Suddenly, Derkeethus looked up towards an escarpment where a spring tumbled over the edge into a pool.  Following his gaze, I saw a giant standing there with his thoughtful, vacant gaze looking out upon the world below.  

    "Hey!  Wait!  Where are you going!" my friend shouted at me, scrambling to catch up.  I darted like a fox over the road and up the embankment as the giant turned away with a rumbling grunt.  My limbs fought me the entire way, and my voice was no longer fully under my control.  I pushed the memory of Quintus's poem down the connection, which was closing rapidly under the increasing control of the poison.  The Argonian's comprehension was palpable as he followed me up the slope, and he lent me as much of his will as he could.

    As the connection stifled back to a hair's breadth thread, the last image that flickered through my mind was of the White Phial along with a brimming sensation of hope.

Comments

4 Comments
  • Eviltrain
    Eviltrain   ·  October 18, 2012
    Sucks to be Henny right now.
  • Jake Dassel
    Jake Dassel   ·  October 17, 2012
    Another great battle sequence, about the decapitations, they only work if you do a power attack standing still.
  • Kyrielle Atrinati
    Kyrielle Atrinati   ·  October 14, 2012
    It's interesting, because when I fought in Robber's Gorge, I didn't get any killmoves to speak of.  Yet, when I fought this group of bandits, not only did I get a decapitation (first ever in all my 372 hours of playing), but the other bandit with him fell...  more
  • Kynareth
    Kynareth   ·  October 14, 2012
    That briarheart is way too close for comfort, and has this evil will of its own.  Very clever with all of it, I think--a plant that has become a character of sorts and a potent force.  
    And I thought the last battle was brutal, this certainly exceed...  more