Take Me To the River
Otalo asked "Are there more tales of the Talons that you have?"
"None like that, the only story left of my time with the Talons is the finale, our denouement if you will. I am guessing that the Empire does not worship Talos anymore?"
Otalo and Timo shook their heads.
"Well it will be no surprise then that the Talons ended bloodily! The Dominion was not overthrown and Talos worship was not restored, but" more quietly "I survived" and then a laugh "I have survived!"
It was early in 188 and the winter had been a harsh one, there had been many Ice Wraiths and Frost Trolls to deal with. Pickings had been, unsurprisingly, lean with few Mer travellers to plague. We'd been able to hunt and survive on the food we'd stored but had not moved as much as, I can now see, we should have. We'd become arrogant, expecting the Thalmor to hide from the freezing storms like we had. This meant our guards were casual, after weeks of not seeing a soul we'd not expected to see anyone. On the whole we spent our time round the fire, all sat in the main room of the cave house. We'd work on various craft's through the days but we became incautious. We'd talk about how the all the Mer people's now lived in the warm south and that only Snow Elves could catch us."
"Fools we were! The Thalmor had petitioned the Emperor for support, grudgingly I suspect, he provided troops. They'd also bribed the Crown Prince of Elinhir, or so we heard when one of our supporters from Falkreath managed to get word to us. The Emperor had forbid the Jarls of Skyrim from helping us too, they grumbled but obeyed. Of course by the time Uller had come back from Falkreath with the messages it was too late, the noose tightened the evening of her return. I guess they were waiting for her return so that we could all be in their net.
"I remember it must have been a few hours after dawn when Uller returned, the doors blasting open with a flurry of snow following her. She was shouting and looked tired, like she'd run a long way. We were sat on various stools and chairs around the fire. Yulie, Eilar and Golnak were playing knucklebones around a table, unsurprisinly all of our clothes and equipment were in a very good state of repair. That was all we'd had to do for weeks. When she flew through the door we all looked at her in stunned surprise. "Hey Uller what's the hurry?" said Marcel.
Uller was angry and banged a blast of fire into the ground, she shouted with her battle-cry voice. "You fools are in here with no guard! Shor's bones you idiots! TALONS SCRAM!! The Dominion is here.
That got us scrambling over one another for armour, weapons. Valkrim took charge quickly ordering Golnak and me to gaurd the door whilst the rest armoured up. We then swapped with Murcel and Yulie to armour up ourselves.
Valkrim peeked round the door "I can't see them Uller."
"They're coming!"
"How do you know?"
She raised her hand and started closing her fingers: "Firstly, I sneaked past them in the night. A large unit of Thalmor with Mer adventurers, bastards! Secondly I was in the Dead Man's Drink when I overheard two of the Thegn's talking about how Jarl Dengeir had been forced to keep the peace and allow the Thalmor free reign to hunt us. I was about to take my leave of Isobel when a courier came through the door and came straight to me, he gave me a note that said 'Beware; the AD Bell Tolls and the Crown paid - you have no safe harbour to hide. Run and save the Eagle's foot.' I have run straight from there to here, on my way out of Falkreath I spotted the Thalmor massing in the valley.
Valkrim's brow furrowed "So we can not run to the Prince of Elinhir as usual, nor will the Jarls help...
"THEY ARE COMING UP THE VALLEY" Yulie interjected "The Legions are with them too. Looks like Emperor Mede needs to keep the peace and we're the prize."
Valkrim returned "Yulie, Marcel shut and bolt the door. Use all of your magickal might to put seals on the doors. The rest of you to the escape gulley."
"I arrived just as Rumi and Omari were lifting the metal grate over the stream into the gulley, our escape route out of the side of the cave. I did a quick wriggle down the gulley and then a dive into a plunge pool. It was a narrow squeeze following the stream through the first passage in the cave before opening up with a vertical cave flooding light down. The Talons re-grouped there, in the light with the odd flake of snow drifting down through the ferns. All of us made it down.Valkrim looked around, we could tell he was warming up for one of his speeches. "Well, my family of Talons, it looks like we're come to an end. We've been out-manouevered, the numbers of Imperial and Dominion troops out there leaves no choice but to break up this band of banditry. I suggest we split up, no more than two to a group, and escape. May Talos guide and protect you, my battle-friends." A tear appeared to well up but was brutally quelled "And if you get caught kill as many as you can. There'll be no mercy for us!"
It was a subdued end to our minor rebellion for Talos.
We shook hands and discussed directions. Rumi and Omari were going to head back into Hammerfell. Golnak and I both chose to go it alone, Golnak to head North whilst I thought to head back to Applewatch and take it from there. Uller and Yulie decided to go together and escape to the southlands of Cyrodiil while the rest just said goodbye with no mention of their plans. The girls started climbing the cave just as I slipped back into the stream, to swim and crawl downstream through the rest of the cave until I could get to the river. There were some terrible moments... have you ever tried swimming in heavy armour?"
Otalo and Timo shook their heads "That is foolish."
"Yes but things were desperate, luckily it became shallow enough for me to stand just before I drowned! The stream came out above the river in a waterfall. On a summer's day you'd admire the beauty of the river, the waterfall and the spray but icy melt water is freezing, even for a Nord like me. I had to wait for hours there to make sure no one was watching, I saw occasional groups of Legionnaires marching up and down the river bank. At one point, braced and hidden against the cave walls of the stream I thought I heard the sounds of battle floating down the canyon. During those hours I was expecting at some point our hunters to find my hiding place. Nervously I kept some of my attention the way I came, ready to swing my Greatsword on Thalmor searchers. I imagined my final battle here, silhouetted on the edge of the woth sunlight and spray around us. It was I thought not a bad place to die, the view into the Jerall Mountains, the sunlight and a lonely cave with a desperate warrior and his two handed blade.
No one came.
"It was dusk before I made the leap, praying to Kynareth that the river was deep and I'd not break my legs. Luckily it was deep enough, I scrambled down the river and spent the next hour moving carefully from one Juniper covered rock to the next. Eventuallyl I came to a bridge on the road from Cyrodiil to Skyrim. By this time I was cold and hungry, I couldn't stay in the river for ever but the guards on the bridge were alert and showed no signs of leaving. I had to break cover and chose to sneak out onto the bank well above the river it was at that point that two Ice Wraiths came and attacked me, I was forced to use magical flames to hit them in between sword strokes. Which gave away my position, the guards came and helped despatch the Ice Wraiths. It was once they were dead the trouble started. The captain used his torch to light my face
"Halt, stop right there criminal scum."
I was captured, I couldn't face killing Imperial Guardsmen who had helped me.
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