Something dragged me out of my thoughts—the silence. Sometimes silence is more unsettling than noise, and then you have to look for the reasons, because in the silence can be the death lurking, coming to visit with soft, determined steps. The storm had suddenly stopped, and I could hear the drops of water falling on the floor of the cave at the entrance. Not only that, but also the faint sound, impossible to distinguish for normal hearing, of stealthy footsteps approaching. There were more, four people approaching, stepping carefully through the thick, wet layer of snow that had just been laid at the bottom of the canyon. I fixed my eyes on Aela's cloak at the grotto's mouth, and when it shifted just slightly, I snatched up the crossbow and fired through the cloth right where an average height man's head should have been.

  A scream. And a heavy fall.

  At once, a one-eyed brute in ragged furs burst inside, swinging a rusty, jagged sword. Three knives flew from my left hand in swift rhythm—thunk, thunk, thunk—and he was down, gagging blood; behind him, a giant of a man came, bare-chested, veins bulging, brandishing a war hammer so big it seemed forged for giants. He stormed forward, bellowing, and the cave shook with the weight of his steps.

  I rolled low, between his legs, and cut upward. He stumbled—then crashed headfirst, his great hammer flying loose and striking the cave wall with a deafening crack that sent stone chips scattering. That, finally, woke Aela. With the reflex of a born predator, she drove her dagger straight into the brute's chest, pinning him to the ground as he let out one last gasp.

  I held still, listening. Nothing more came. Then, carefully, I stepped outside. The last of them was fleeing, stumbling in the thick snow, his back a pale target in the night. I let fly my final knife—it struck his leg, and he collapsed, writhing, clutching the wound.

  "Ouch. That hurt," I whispered, almost kindly, before slipping back into the cave.

  Aela was busy inspecting the brigands' equipment. She gathered up the sword and the hammer and said with certainty, "Look, both are Adriannes's work; see her mark on the hilt." I nodded, recollected my knives, took a long, sturdy rope from the fallen giant, then asked her to come and help fetch the last of them.

  The fourth could not stand on his own. I bound his hands and, together, we dragged him back into the grotto. There I studied him in the firelight, and the image seared itself into me—an image I would meet again and again along Skyrim's windy roads. Long, greasy hair, a beard like tangled roots, a broad frame wrapped in furs patched here and there with hardened leather, and eyes—empty, feral, and yet, just now, burning with a boundless fear. His hands were like great shovels, the kind that could crush stone. The very portrait of a highland brigand. And an archer too, if his quiver meant anything.

  I examined the wound on his leg—no tendon cut, no great vein split. Relief. From a pouch at my belt, I sprinkled white dust upon it, and he screamed, shrill as a little girl whipped raw. I did not laugh, not even smile; I knew too well that mortals and even elves feel pain more sharply than I do. I bound the wound and soaked the bandage with a soothing tincture.

  Then I leaned close, smiled sweetly, and fixed him with my eyes. "Tell me—what were you doing in this cursed gorge? Do you not fear the dragon that circles above?"

  He mumbled about Helgen, claiming he was a poor survivor of some burnt hamlet. I knew it for a lie; Alduin scorched nothing more than he willed, and no such tale would pass with me. Yet that long, firm eye-to-eye contact granted me entrance into the realm of his savage soul.

  And there I saw it all—murder and fire, rape and torture, heartbreaking children's cries and women's desperate screams. The dark gifts that war generously scatters over the realms of men and mer. These didn't interest me anyway, so I drifted further through the mire of half-acknowledged guilt and primal greed, probing through a veil of raw terror from where rose before me a vision of draugr, swift and merciless, surging from their sarcophagi and falling upon the living men:

  At first, there was only the torchlight trembling on the barrow's threshold, frightened whispers, and the smell of old, nearly rotten stone and ancient sealed crypt. The gang leader, Arvel, just laughed, boasting of treasures and easy prey, and the others pressed close behind him. Then, oppressive silence and the air grew colder, heavy, as though the mountain's bowels themselves were holding their breath.

  From the dark maw ahead came sounds like stone grinding on stone, and then, they came, stepped forth—the draugr.

  Not walking as men do, but heaving themselves out of the shadows, their movements stiff, yet filled with dreadful certainty. Their skin was dark, some the sickly grey of old ash, others stained blue, like corpses drowned in icy seas. Tattered armor clung to them, rusted mail and broken shields, but in their fists gleamed blades that had never lost their edge, axes sharp enough to cleave bone from flesh, heavy maces eager to shatter bones and meat alike.

  And their eyes—ah, their eyes! They blazed like coals in the darkness, pitiless, inhuman. One raised a hand, blackened fingers spread, and with a gesture, the torchlight itself guttered and died, swallowed by a shroud of cold sorcery. Another howled, not with a voice but with the hollow roar of the grave, and the sound tore courage from the marrow.

  They came upon the gang like a tidal wave. The ancient steel struck with inhuman strength, shields splintered, and men who had gutted peasants, travelers, and peddlers without blinking now shrieked as their bodies were dashed against the stone. One draugr hurled a curse that seared the lungs, leaving a man choking as though filled with poison. Another's axe cleaved two at once, flesh and fur alike flying across the chamber.

  Through the brigand's eyes, I saw the bitter truth, exactly as my daddy warned us: these were not beasts, not mindless dead, but ancient warriors bound to their sorcerer king's tomb, guardians of secrets and treasure. Death had not weakened them—it had made them stronger, crueler, eternal.

  And so the memory froze on a single image: a draugr looming tall, his helm crowned with horns, his sword lifted high, his eyes burning straight into the soul—as though the grave itself had chosen its next dweller.

  I broke the horrible, weary link and drew a deep breath. When my eyes cleared, I found Aela staring at me with that lupine, wild look of hers.

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  "Well? Why are you patching him, Elsie? Just cut his throat and let's be done. Dawn is nearly here!"

  I shook my head and gave the man a sweet smile. "Oh, but he's a friendly and helpful fellow, Aela! He'll lend us a hand—only if he so wishes, of course."

  "I'll help you, lady, anything you want—only let me go after!" the bandit gasped.

  "See, Aela?" I murmured. "The lad is helpful by nature." Then, softly but firmly, I added: "You'll stay put here, quiet, until I return. Deal?"

  "Yes! Yes, lady! Whatever you say—I'm your sworn servant till death," he said, eyes brimming with desperate hope.

  I asked Aela to tend the fire so it would smolder long and steadily. Together we dragged the dead brigand from the entrance inside the cave, stripping from him a woodcutter's axe and tossing it aside with the other weapons, then fetching also the bow—a surprisingly fine one, as Aela at once declared.

  "An Imperial army's bow! Look at these silver inlays!" she yelled, her voice ringing in the grotto.

  "Hush, Aela! Take it if you like, but quiet now," I whispered sharply. She bit her tongue at last, and we pressed on into the gorge.

  The storm had left its mark. Wet, heavy snow clung to our boots and legs, sucking us down with every step, and in some places we waded waist-deep through icy slush. The ravine climbed steadily, cruelly, until the first weak light of sunrise found us soaked to the bone and exhausted, standing upon a narrow plateau. At its far end, carved into the looming peak, rose the grim maw of Bleak Fallow Barrow.

  On the way, between gasps, Aela told me what she knew of the affair. Lucan, the Riverwood trader, had come to Kodlak, tears dripping into his beard, complaining that a thief named Arvel had stolen from him a family heirloom—a bauble of no great worth save for the odd carvings on it. "A worthless thing, but dear to me, for it was my mother's," he had sobbed. Lucan offered five hundred septims for its return.

  The Harbinger was ready to hand the task to some green whelp when Aventus Avenicci, the steward, burst in with grim tidings from Earl Balgruf himself. Two draugr had been sighted near Riverwood—they had slain one cow and a guard before vanishing into the woods. The Earl demanded the Bleak Fallows Barrow be checked, and for this offered one thousand septims.

  "A fat contract, Elsie! Do you see now how much gold we can claim?" Aela clucked, her eyes bright with excitement.

  "Yes, I do," I said, very seriously. "Or mayhap we could claim a premature and restless grave, Aela."

  We pressed on, the plateau lying silent at first, a white, unbroken sheet of snow stretched beneath the newborn sun. Mist clung to the ridges, curling like pale fingers down the ravine, while the carved mouth of Bleak Fallow Barrow rose above us, grim and heavy, like the skull of some ancient, ravenous beast. Aela and I trudged across the drift, soaked to the marrow, our boots heavy with slush. The air reeked faintly of old stone—and of something older still, long frozen rot into the mountain's bones.

  I did not like that smell. I did not like the silence either, so absolute and watchful that it felt like a trap waiting to spring. Nor did I like that cursed barrow itself, looming ahead like a greedy tomb, hungry for new, fresh tenants. My stomach twisted; I shivered despite myself and muttered to Aela that perhaps we should halt, take a moment, and at least try to appraise the situation.

  She laughed—a clear, reckless sound that rang strangely in the dead air—and shook the damp strands of hair from her eyes. "Stay? Lose time? When the world waits for us, Elsie? No, girl, no! I intend to be in Riverwood by nightfall, with hot stew in my belly and vodka in my tankard!" She lifted her bow as if in salute, her eyes alight with fire. "We have no time to waste! This is our moment of glory! Welcome to the Companions, kitten!"

  Then the snow stirred—by itself.

  What I first took for wind-driven eddies revealed itself as shapes, dark lumps half-buried in the whiteness. Draugr. One after another, they rose, slow and terrible, shaking ice and snow from their broken frames. Scores of them. Their armor was cracked and rust-eaten, their limbs severed or hanging by shreds of sinew, yet they moved—relentlessly, like waves breaking against a cliff. Eyes burned with a cold, sickly light, the color of Secunda's light on a tomb.

  Aela wasted no time. She drew her bow and loosed shaft after shaft, each arrow thudding into skulls and ribcages, and still they came. When her quiver emptied, she drew her dagger and fought like a legendary warrior of the old, slashing and stabbing, her cry raw and triumphant in the bitter wind.

  I fired my crossbow until my fingers bled from the reloading, hurled knives until none were left, but it was like cutting into water: the horde closed in again, no matter how many fell. One after another, they rose from the snow, torn and mangled, hands hacked away, heads crushed, yet filled with that sick, unstoppable purpose. They were endless.

  In that moment, my daddy's wise, calm, and so dear voice came back to me: "Elsie, whatever you do, you'll never be a true Companion. They are shield-siblings; they always fight in close formation, each one watching the other's back." And the solitary panther that lives in the wet, howling jungle inside me sighed, contemptuous and cold: 'Ah, if only you were alone! I could have saved your sorry, unworthy ass; you could fly and vanish, then slip between them like a shadow, strike, do the deed, and be gone. Yet now you will just die here, like a fool unworthy of the priceless gifts you have been given.'

  I was tired and sad, very sad: one draugr crawled forward on its hands alone, its legs left behind in the snow; another, headless, swung a rusted axe blindly, driven by some foul animus that cared nothing for wounds or reason; two others, nearby, were loosing arrows that dented and chipped Aela's breastplate. They swarmed us in the bitter end, a tide of death, and though Aela fought like the songs of Ysgramor's age, she was finally borne down. I saw her vanish beneath a knot of clawing corpses, her scream torn from her lungs as she fell.

  Panic seized me. I struck, I kicked, I screamed, but the horde closed all around. I saw no way through. No way out.

  And then the sky split with a roar.

  A shadow, vast and winged, plunged from the mist above. Fire fell with it. A torrent of flame washed across the plateau, lighting the snow in crimson and gold.

  I threw myself over Aela, shielding her broken body with my own, and with a desperate gasp, I summoned the supreme spell—a wonder from Elena's legacy, learned long ago in Bravil. At once, a ward of dark, shimmering light erupted around us, a trembling dome that crackled and hissed as the dragon's breath struck it. Fire poured over us in a torrent, heat like the breath of Mehrunes Dagon's realm itself, searing the very air, yet the ward endured—quivering, bending, but unbroken. For a fleeting moment, I saw Elena's angular face again, and I heard her severe voice, chanting in the crackling of the flames, reminding me sternly that such power always demands a hefty price.

  Draugr shriveled where they stood, bones exploding into cinders, frozen flesh hissing into black steam. The horde writhed, staggered, and then was no more—consumed utterly in the cleansing blaze.

  And then, as suddenly as it came, the storm of fire passed.

  The dragon wheeled once in the sky, vast wings beating snow and smoke into whirlwinds, roared deep once, then vanished into the heavens, its cry echoing off the peaks like the laughter of gods.

  I lay there shuddering, Aela limp beneath me, our ward collapsing into drifting motes of shadow that faded like dying fireflies. The spell had drained me to the marrow; every breath rasped as though drawn through smoke. Aela stirred faintly, her chest rising shallowly, blood soaking my arms where I held her.

  The plateau was like a cemetery full of open graves. Blackened snow steamed around us, littered with charred bones, half-melted blades, and armor twisted into grotesque shapes. The air still reeked of scorched stone and ancient rot.

  Dawn had broken over the peaks, yet no warmth came with it—only a pale, indifferent light falling across the ruins. What lingered was the memory of fire that had devoured the draugr, and with it the iron certainty that the game had changed. Nothing about this cursed barrow would be as I had ever imagined.