Flash!

We’d made a wedge on the shore when bursts of starlight exploded over the beach. Burning embers of magelight danced a dozen yards above us, and were quickly followed by two golden bolts slamming into the closest skeletons. They burst into flames, casting more light around. The skeletons shrieked as Riga’s handiwork reduced them to ashes, competing violet and gold snakes writhing across the old bones.

“Hold the line! Shields front!” I took a position behind Gromm, while a few others with two handed weapons found a shield bearing battle brother. Jorman had done more than just train me with weapons. I’d learned a few standard tactics for fighting as a small unit. All of the men that had come along were warriors, they’d know what to do. Riga sent another flare farther up the beach, revealing the bodies of a half dozen skeletons. Gold tipped arrows began raining down on them, the twins and the other skilled archers picked them apart before they’d taken another three steps.

“Easy, don’t get too excited.” I called to the melee line. A few men were taking steps forward, wanting to charge in and finish off the burning skeletons.

“Angven, do you see any more coming?” I called back to the boat.

“Left side, a few hundred yards, twenty or so. We’ve got some farther off, coming down the trail. I count ten that way.” Angven answered, sending another arrow at each group. The golden trace was almost as useful as the fact that they set the skeletons on fire. Jorn was a ways down the line, and called over to me.

“We don’t want to risk them joining together. If we take the closer group, the archers and your mage can protect the ship. We can be back here before any other skeletons reach us.” Jorn made a good point. We could hold against thirty skeletons coming right at us without too much trouble, but it’d be a problem if they joined up with a larger group from the cave. A hundred skeletons would overrun us.

“Angven, keep the ship safe! We’re going to take the eastern group. We’ll be back in ten minutes.” I set the clock.

“Not a bone past the first stone!” Angven replied. Lodor and a few other men would stay too. The ship was in good hands.

“Line, left!” I called. The men were a bit clumsy, some understood the order faster than others, but we made good time once they’d all figured out that I meant for them to just turn ninety degrees, and advance in single file. I took the front, while Jorn stayed in the middle. Gromm and I had ended up on the far left of our wedge, so I stayed just behind him and one of Jorn’s men.

“Gromm, Adis was it? When we meet the skeletons, I want you two men in the middle. You two, you’ll be the wings. Gromm, Adis, when I shout ‘Breach!’ I want you two to fold inwards, and the two handers will charge out from the middle. We’ll break the skeletons in half, and the rest of you follow behind to clean up.” The plan was crude, but very simple. Three men, Jorn was one of them, would join me for the charge. The path between the rocks was narrow, only allowing four, maybe five men across. Our four shields were arrayed at the front when we turned a corner and came face to skull with the skeletons. They were still ten yards away.

“Shields up! Halt!” I yelled, my hands spinning. I threw a mage light into the air, it wasn’t as neat as Riga’s, but it did the job. The skeletons clacked and rattled as they realized what was happening, their boney feet slapping the pebbly gravel between us. The first skeletons collided with our front rank, bounced off, and then got pressed in by the weight of the force behind them. Axes flashed, maces swung, Gromm and the front line pulverized four of them.

“Breach!” I shouted, and the two center pieces folded to their respective sides. A pile of skeletons stumbled into our charge, utterly off balance. My axe hit one through the collar bone, down into the salty spine, and broke it apart in a flash of golden orange. The ring on my hand pulsed, a warm light seeming to pour into my weapon as the blade bit through the cursed bone. I decked another skeleton with the haft as I brought the blade back around for another swing, carving through the horde as they tried to reform. The other men, one each with a hammer, axe, and sword, all did their part. They knew that we had to punch through all the way to the other side, otherwise we’d be mashed between the skeletons and our own shield bearers.

“Stendarr witnesses us!” I came up with something, anything to keep the fervor and momentum going. We were half way through. A skeleton swung its hand axe for my neck. I parried it, took the entire arm off, followed through, and scattered another’s skull over the beach. Another tried to raise its shield, like it could stop two hundred forty pounds of angry, heavily armored man. None of us swung at it, it was just knocked flat and trampled into dust. Finally, I saw the other side. The last skeleton in the line stopped, screeched, and tried to dodge away from us, only to smash its own skull into a rock. The skeleton fell apart, bones rolling off in every direction. I couldn’t help but laugh, and think to my self.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Does that count as suicide? Workplace accident?

The rest of the men had followed the plan well. The shields had surged through the skeleton column and bludgeoned them to pieces behind us. We were now arranged in another file, with a few men still putting their axes and maces into the skeletons that hadn’t completely disintegrated.

“Hold! About… About face! Turn around damn it!” I hesitated on the order. It was such a strange thing, past memories told me it was the proper order to turn around, but it wasn’t a combat order. It was a parade order to an army I’d never been a part of. There wasn’t time to consider it, but a few questions were answered in my head.

“You heard the Ranger, back to the ship!” Jorn’s voice shook me out of my memories. We weren’t far, it’d taken six minutes to get here, fight, and turn around. I jogged to the head of the line, feeling the weight of my armor with every step after the short fighting sprint.

“How’s that… How’s that for a first fight?” I asked Jorn after I caught my breath. He had a smile as wide as an ox.

“A good one. We crushed them.” Jorn had a note of pride in his voice.

“And we’ll crush the next ones too. Come on people, move it!” I hollered back down the line. Some of them were most assuredly not in shape, if the hundred yard jog was anything to go on. They huffed and chugged back to the boat, where a new pile of broken bones had formed.

“Where’d these come from?” I looked up to Angven. He pointed west.

“Just up the beach, they came out from the rocks and tried to charge the ship. We cut them down, but a few got close. The oarsmen killed three.” Angven cocked his head at the men, sitting proudly around the nose, improvised weapons in hand.

“Honestly, oars aren’t bad. Lots of leverage and reach. How close are the ones from the trail?” My eyes tracked south, but I couldn’t see any blue eyes.

“I lost them a minute ago, they turned towards the west. Maybe they heard your fight?” Angven guessed.

“Maybe so. Get set in for another wave.” I patted the hull of the ship. It was exactly what happened, as the skeletons wandered out piecemeal from the direction we’d just arrived. It was an easy fight, the archers got most of them before Riga could, the melee line didn’t get to see anymore fighting.

“That can’t be all of them, could it?” Jorn asked after we’d sat for an hour. We’d gotten a rough count in the mean time, and come up with forty one and forty six. It was a good enough range for me.

“It might be. We’ve thinned them out. Let’s get back on the boat, and head for the cave. We can hold off shore and let these guys rest. The running took it out of them.” I pointed to a few men who were starting to show the strain of standing in their armor. Jorn nodded, and we loaded back up on the longboat. With a scrape and huff from the crew, we were pulled back out to the water. The trip up to the cave didn’t take much longer, fifteen minutes put us three hundred yards off shore, looking at the entrance. Dozens of glowing eyes were peering out of the darkness, nestled in the rocks and ice.

“That’s a bad idea.” Lodor spoke first after we’d started picking them out.

“It’s a terrible idea. Those ones up higher are archers. If we close in to shoot, they’ll rain arrows down on us. We need to hit them from above and clear them off those rocks. If we got rid of the archers that way, we could sail right into the cave mouth. Does anyone know if this cave has a second way out?” I looked to the men. They shrugged.

“We don’t make a habit of poking around in old caves.” Jorn’s expression told me all I needed to know.

“Skyrim’s an old land. There could be anything in there.” I took Jori’s words for my own, agreeing with Jorn’s sentiment. “What about the land around here. Are there many other caves? Crevasses in the ice?” A new plan was forming in my mind. One of Jorn’s men, the one that had been with Gromm in the shield line, spoke up.

“I’ve hunted the forests further inland from here, there are crevasses. In the summer, the ice caverns melt and lose their roof. Most of them will be frozen solid now, but there might be a second way in. See the cliffs? It’s rock, but towards the top, that’s all ice. The cave has an ice roof. Your mage could make a second way in.” Adis pointed to the cave mouth. He was right, I couldn’t see a stone overhang, it was just ice. That might change farther inside, but it was worth investigating.

“Going looking for a crevasse now would be dangerous. How deep are the snow drifts? Up to our knees? Higher? We might find one by stumbling into it. Let alone fighting our way inside. We could fall a hundred feet or more.” Angven caught Adis’ eye. The hunters shared a silent conversation.

“There’s a man in Sea Crest. He explores places like this. He’s old now, but he used to go looking for places like this all over Skyrim. Maybe he knows.” One of the oarsmen spoke. There were two or three hisses.

“Mad Moth is an old fool. Half of those stories are lies, the other half are exaggerated.” Another spoke up. I turned to Jorn.

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Just that he used to be the adventuring type. Not all of his stories are lies, my father says he did really go into some places, he has the scars and the trophies to prove it. We’d have to turn back for the Wharf. I’m not taking the ship by Sea Crest in the dark, we’ll break up on the rocks around the point. It’s getting late anyways, we should rest, and come up with a new plan in the morning. Turn us around! Back to the Wharf!” Jorn made up his mind before anyone could argue. I didn’t much feel like it either, he was right. We’d been on the sleds for eight hours, and now we’d spent three hours fighting and sailing.

“We should see if any of the men from Sea Crest would fight. If they can hold the high ground, we could sail right into the cave. How long is the trip if we go by boat tomorrow?” That led into a whole new conversation on the journey back. It was longer with the wind blowing easterly, but the men took turns with the oars. We’d have a working plan of attack by tomorrow night, and the cave would be ours by the night after that.