All-Flag Rangers: Part V, Journey to the East

Skyrim, 4E 97

Lagerta led the rangers east, past the town of Ivarstead they'd seen on all the signs, along a winding road hugging the contours of a large lake. The journey was calm though they were often threatened by hungry bears who roared and threatened but always decideded against attacking after a bellow from Alessandros or a growl from Lagerta.

They were well past Riften, on a trail up the Velothi Mountains when Furioso called for a lunch stop. They sat on a rock by the roadand ate their lunches, and halfway through his the moth priest excused himself to find a peaceful spot in which to meditate. That left Captain Aurelius Leto-Shaihe, Iszir the Singer, the bull Alessandros, and Lagerta Storm-Wife to finish their meal in awkward silence.

"So," said Lagerta as she slurped her stew, "what is the purpose of this fellowship of yours."

"You didn't want to join so you won't know." Aurelius said, "If you do want to know..."

"It seems to me that you did join, and yet you do not know either." she put her bowl down, "I can see it. You all walk like warriors, but you feel to me like soldiers, just following orders. Even you, southerner. You act like the commander, but you know no more than the rest. Only the Jhunal-man walks like he knows why he walks."

Aurelius shrugged. "I am a soldier, an officer. And an officer is just a soldier a little higher on the command chain."

Lagerta shook her head, "No, you are not soldiers. Not anymore. You would not have come looking for me if you were gathering soldiers. You are a fellowship of warriors, and warriors go forth secure in the knowing of why they go forth. I told you why I went to the Rock - live or die I went knowing why. But you all go forth blindly, led by a blind man. If you die, you'll never know what the purpose was."

"We'll die in the defense of the Empire, and that's all I need to know."

"Perhaps you are just a well-trained soldier after all." Lagerta turned to Iszir, who was eating a carrot, "And you, western man? You are surely a warrior. Why you have you joined this blind band? You walk like a dead man."

Iszir put down hir food and glanced north, to where Furioso had gone to meditate. Iszir thought for a moment and seemed to come to a decision.

"I lost much. The priest brought an end to my loss, a seal for the wound." Iszir picked up hir saber and held it on hir lap, "Once my kind served kings and emperors, till they were betrayed," Iszir kept hir gaze on the blade, studiously not glancing towards Aurelius, "After that they acted without guidance or will, every one their own, every one ronin in their hearts. It is perhaps time to return the Ansei to the service of wise old men. I follow Furioso."

"And if you are betrayed by kings and emperors and priests again?" said Lagerta, not catching Aurelius' upset eye.

"That bridge I shall cross when it burns."

Lagerta did not seem satisfied. "And you, Little Kar? Why are you here?"

The minotaur stopped chewing the apple he held and snorted, "I's name is Alessandros. " he said petutantly, "It's mine. I's earned it."

They waited for more, but it seemed he would say nothing else. After a moment Lagerta let out a bitter chuckle.

"You are all pathetic." She bit into a chicken leg, tearing the meat like an animal. "Spineless, heartless, and mindless, respectively. You cannot fight as one band if you do not share the same values."

"You are very wise," Aurelius said diplomatically, "come along and show us how."

"Do not mock me snake-blood," she snapped at him, "I am no wiser than Kyne has made me, and just because my way is the right way does not mean it is your right way." She bit another chunk and they heard the bone crack. She spit it out, "You foreigners do not understand honor in war and that is why you will fail. I will not join a band destined for failure."

"Is victory that important then?" said Aurelius, "Moreso than to live in story and song?"

"You wish to tempt me with Shor's Hall? I'd rather take wind with the kisses of my wife in the heavens. That is one thing the Greybeards and I may agree on."

"Greybeards?" Iszir said quietly, "Is it they who taught you the Shouting Way?"

Lagerta suddenly looked tired, and old, and she was. Older than everyone in the group but Furioso. She spoke, "They tried. I did not listen, or I could not listen. Their ways are not our ways. Do not misunderstand me - I have great respect for their age and their history, but they are not of the true old way. They are new nords, in spirit if not time, they are not of Atmora of old. The Windcaller came back with the others from the East defeated, and was broken. In one defeat he proclaimed that the nord way was wrong, and that the thoom was for peace and meditation only. But we have thoomed long and hard, since before Skyrim, when we lived in the green summers of old Atmora. It freed us from tyranny, it gave us the Kyneland, it brought us the great empire of the north. And when we were defeated, Jurgen gave up, and those who disputed him were defeated by his inaction, and they gave up, and we lost the thoom and became weak. So I did not learn from their inaction and their weakness, I could not. I left, and it was only then that I heard the words and knew them well enough to form my own thoom. Their Kyne is your kind, your Kin-a-rath, my Kyne is the old Kyne, the Storm-Kyne, the war-wife of Shor and the mistress of battle and the Kiss-at-the-End and I am her wife and she is mine. I will not simper and breathe and scream in her name, I will war and push and bleed and fight and Shout and she will know me and love me that way, the proper and the old way.

"And that is who you all are: the Disputants of the Windcaller - you allow yourselves to be defeated by inaction, though it is your own inaction. You know nothing, and do not struggle to find it and so you will fail."

"So show us how." said Aurelius, more earnestly than Iszir suspected he felt, "That is why you walk Skyrim, isn't it? You could stay in Winterhold, shouting down bandits and bears and mammoths and giants, walk the ice floes like a barbarian and live as your precious nords of old. But instead you walk the breadth of the land and slaughter hagravens so little children can sleep at night, because if they see a woman using the thu'um properly, to protect the land, then perhaps they will return to the old ways and not give in to the, to the," he grimaced then, "the Imperialization of Skyrim. Isn't that right?"

Lagerta said nothing, but Iszir did,

"It is. We can see it in the eyes of your unpainted face."

"How will you change nine nations, nine holds who wish only for peace, if you cannot change three people?" Aurelius continued doggedly, "You can't shout all your problems away."

"Shouting is not shouting," Lagerta snapped, "Shouting is not talking. Shouting is action. I act."

"Then act now." said the Captain, "And Lagerta Storm-Wife of the All-Flag Rangers saved Tamriel, there will be no nord more storied since Talos himself."

"If a nord he was."

"Talos was born in Atmora."

"Is that what the Imperial histories say?"

"He was a dragonborn in your legends," Aurelius persisted, "and walked your steps to see the old men you have so disrespected."

"The stories I learned say Wulfharth walked those steps, and that he was so shamed by the inaction of the Greybeards that he wept ash and ash fell across the villages around the mountain, and Wulfharth was seen no more. Your emperor came from the west, and we knew him not in Skyrim till he came and conquered and he means no more to us than any other foreign god."

"Blasphemy does little to harm the gods, what you think does not matter. Only what you do."

"Yes."

"So do something."

Leaves crunched, and Furioso came down the little path.

"I have communicated with Ioriel in the Imperial City and he has located our next target," said the moth priest, "We travel to Vvardenfell."

"Vvardenfell is a smoking ruin." Aurelius said.

"Decades ago, we'll be fine enough now. We'll be able to breathe anyways." the blind priest turned to the nord woman, who stood looking steadfastly eastward, "I thank you Lagerta, for your guiding us. I wish we could have convin-"

She passed him as he spoke, brushing hard against his shoulder, walking into the east. Into Morrowind.

"Eh?" asked Furioso.

"We have a new ranger mothbrother," said Captain Aurelius, with a satisfied glint in his slitted eyes.

"Come on, let's go get ourselves another."

Part VI, In the Murdered House