Wildlander Tales: "The Days when Torygg was King" by William Slayden

Reyur had made up his mind to turn around and head back to the village when something spooked the hare. It tore through the bush in which he’d been crouching for the past three hours, his legs tingling with numbness. 

‍

“What was that?” The old Nord squawked, rising from where he’d been seated on the ground next to the fire. 

‍

The big elf looked over from his place on the stump. In the firelight his red eyes glowed like a deer’s. “Dunno. Sounded like an animal to me.” 

‍

“Well, go and check it out, you dunderhead.” 

‍

The big elf sighed. “Aye, chum.” He carefully set aside the figure he’d been carving and rose. Of course he held on to his knife.

‍

Reyur cursed the hare. Revenge, he thought, for all your kind me and my uncle have put in an early grave. He willed the big elf to stop, to not take another step towards the wild elderberry that had been Reyur’s hiding spot as he’d eavesdropped on the bandits. He found now that the time had come, he didn’t actually want to kill the elf. Drexis, was his name. The faro player. Quiet and dignified at the card table with his great hammer propped up beside him. A great lover of stretching his long legs before the fire. 

‍

But of course the elf did not stop. With the knife poised at his hip, he cautiously edged towards the bush. Reyur’s left hand tightened around the hunting bow’s grip. An unexpected wave of stag fever washed over him, his heart pounding in his chest like the crashing of Alvor’s hammer against the anvil back in the village. Reyur had felt this way the first time he’d spied a stag through the line of spruce on Ilinalta’s eastern shore, but he’d never thought to experience it with a man or mer downrange of his knocked arrow. Or at least not this soon. Not tonight. 

‍

As the elf approached the bush, he hummed a tune that sounded like “The Age of Aggression,” but which Reyur recognized as “The Days when Torygg was King,” an original his childhood friend, Sven, had written while he was away in Solitude studying at the bard’s college. When he’d come back to Riverwood, Sven had been hired on at the inn, and he’d begun to greatly aggravate the old timers with his new tune. 

‍

“I’m sick of that maudlin drivel,” Reyur had heard one of the out-of-work miners say to another. “From those words, you’d have thought everything was mountain flowers and Honningbrew mead back then. But we know better, don’t we? Those infernal ‘justiciars’ carting off everyone who looked like they’d ever uttered the holy name, ‘Talos.’ A man couldn’t properly digest his porridge from worrying so.” 

‍

Despite the mumblings, Sven had continued to play and perfect his song. Reyur had been surprised when he’d looked up from his drink and seen the big elf watching Sven, his red-tinged eyes soft and far away. Reyur knew from local gossip the big elf and the old Nord were Stormcloak defectors—“An elf fighting for the Stormcloaks?” Reyur had queried Delphine, the inn keeper and gossip gatherer. “From what I hear, they’ve gotten quite desperate,” she said, running a rag around the rim of a tankard. “And if I know Galmar, he’d probably say, ‘So long as there’s ice in his veins, then even an elf is fit to carry a Nord’s pack into battle.” 

‍

Reyur had held off as long as he could. The elf was getting close enough that he’d spy Reyur’s silhouette in the elderberry bush, even though he’d carefully chosen the spot, situated as it was at the penumbra of the campfire’s glow. The elf’s humming was clear, resonant, on tune. It made Reyur sad to do what he had to do. 

‍

When the arrow hit the elf’s neck there was the wet sound of flesh rending, and then the thwack of the broadhead stopping on the elf’s vertebra. The dark hands went up to his throat and found the arrow, and the red eyes bugged and bulged, as though out in the dark they’d spied some ultimate outrage. He fell gagging to his knees, and the old Nord screamed and dove behind the tent. 

‍

As he watched the big elf fall over on his side to begin his final struggle with life and death, Reyur realized the trouble he was in. He hadn’t been aiming for the elf’s neck, he’d been aiming for his unarmored heart; in his excitement he’d flinched and pulled up as he’d loosed the arrow. He hadn’t made a mistake that elementary since he was a boy. His uncle, unable to conceal his pride, had always said Reyur had his mother’s skill with a bow. She’d been a scout for the Imperial army during the Great War, and in the following years she’d been the bane of every archery competition from Riverwood to Haafingar. She’d deserved a more noble death than what she’d gotten. Only southern women were expected to die in the birthing bed. Northern women spoke of pregnancy like it was a bout of rockjoint, nothing so serious as to keep one away from the hearth and hammer any longer than was necessary. 

‍

“Who’s there?” the old Nord quavered from behind the tent. “Ja’dara? We’re right where we’re supposed to be. I told you, you can count on us! The caravan’s not expected until dawn!”

‍

Reyur rose and stepped out of the bush. “Ja’dara, huh?” he called out in a voice he hoped sounded more confident than he actually felt. “That the Khajiit standing guard outside Embershard?”

‍

The old Nord poked his head above the tent. “Huh?”

‍

Reyur fired off a quick shot, but the old Nord ducked back behind the tent and the arrow put a small rent in the tent’s spine. 

‍

“Who are you? What do you want?”

‍

“I want you to go and tell your buddies to leave our caravans alone.”

‍

 Reyur crept forward, stepping carefully over the elf’s twitching body. In all of his daydreams, he’d never imagined the elf would go down so easily. He and Bolri had spent evenings lying under the spruce by the mill strategizing over how to best break the elf’s guard. Bolri was big and quick herself, and every strategy she proposed Reyur had countered, "Sure, that’d work for you." Oh, she was going to be furious Reyur had engaged without her, but when he explained the hare, what could she do but laugh at his misfortune? She’d always found it so amusing before. 

‍

That is, if he made it back.

‍

“Here’s an idea,” the old Nord squawked from his hiding place. “Put down that bow and fight like a true Nord.” 

‍

For a moment Reyur considered just shooting through the tent. He thought he could see the man’s silhouette. He thought of Bolri, and courage surged within his breast, drowning out the fear and excitement. 

‍

“Come on out,” he said, throwing down the bow hard so the sound of it on the autumn-hard dirt would be well audible. 

‍

He hadn’t expected the old Nord to be so quick. One moment he heard scrambling, the rustling of leather, the huffing of breath, and then the next the old Nord was upon him, crouched and jabbing with the sword. Reyur hadn’t even had time to draw his ax from where it hung in his belt loop, nor the hide shield from the hook and harness on his back. Instinctively, he leaped away, and the blade tip missed his belly by inches. Probably the hide of his armor would have protected him. Probably. Reyur didn’t want to find out.

‍

But when he’d leaped away the backs of Reyur’s heels caught against the big dead elf, and he went reeling backwards. The old Nord wasted no time following up his initial thrust and came slashing wildly as Reyur backpedaled, trying to maintain his balance. If you fall, you will die, he thought, and then there will be no boasts for Bolri, no verse for Sven, save for an elegy.

The old Nord, whose name was Roggbald—Roggbald Sloth-Eye, on account of the strabismus on his left side—went stumbling over his dead mate in his wild flailing, and this gave Reyur the moment or two he needed to recover. Then his ax was in his right hand and his shield in his left, though not without some hitching and yanking. Gods, we never practicing drawing weapons, he thought. I’ll have to add that to Bolri’s sparring sessions. And then he thought again, that is, if you live. He clenched his teeth against the doubt. Stop doing that! That’s the way a dead man thinks. 

‍

Now that he and the old Nord were squared up, circling around the fire, neither seemed to know what to do. Reyur’s vision was incredibly clear, a phenomenon he recognized from his hunting. The shadowed trees stood out in agonizing relief, the sounds of the wood, the crickets and the jugjugjug of a rock warbler in an overhead pine. The old Nord had thrown on a leather helmet. When had that happened? When he’d been behind the tent? Reyur’s adrenaline had warped the evening’s timeline all to Oblivion.

It seemed all they would do was feint at one another, each dropping his stance and making like he would go for the legs or gut, but neither wanted to commit. Reyur realized with sinking gut he hadn’t trained nearly enough for this moment. The memory of combat was not in his muscles, and he had to think, and to think made one slow and clumsy. Old Roggbald was no better, it seemed—he'd been neglecting the training dummy. The old man with his crooked nose and trailing eye muttered to himself, “Yes, that’s it, to the left now, yes, to the left.” 

‍

“Shut up, you old fool,” Reyur called to him across the fire. He was surprised at the sudden flash of amusement and, unbelievably, good will he felt for the man he meant to kill. How comical, how ridiculous their situation seemed to him, and yet…one of them wouldn’t leave this spruce-covered knoll alive, Reyur knew with cold certainty.

‍

The old Nord wasn’t going to strike first, this much seemed clear. Reyur cursed himself for bringing his father’s iron ax, top heavy and without reach, needing momentum and confidence to wield truly. Bolri had been right in criticizing his choice of weapon. "Oh, you’ll hook someone’s shield, will you? Go ahead and hook mine. I’d bash your head in."

Roggbald had no shield, just a steel sword he gripped too tightly in his splotched right hand. Then why don’t you use your own shield, you bloody fool? Reyur thought. Feint in, get him to jab—it’s all he seems to know—and then parry it away and bury your blade in his collarbone.

It was all he could think to do, and he used an old trick he’d learned from Bolri to break his inertia. Three. Two. One. Go. It’d worked when he’d been too scared to dive into the lake from cliffs near Brittleshin, and it worked now. Reyur darted in and out, but Roggbald didn’t bite on the feint, so when Reyur leaped again to parry the jab, there was no jab to parry, and he batted his shield at the empty air. 

‍

He seemed to feel the cut before it happened. The edge of the blade slipped beneath the strips of his hide skirt. The pain was immediate. Had Reyur just committed he might have closed the distance and retaliated, but as soon as he’d realized his mistake he’d abandoned his attack and tried to leap out of striking distance. In no time the blood was hot on his leg, and moments later it was pooling in his boot. 

‍

“Have that, you little prick,” The old Nord cried gleefully.

‍

Reyur grimaced against the pain, which, while intense, was dulled somewhat by the adrenaline. More problematic was the leg’s stability. He led with his left leg, meaning all the power of his strikes and leaps came from his right, which now bore a deep cut on the thigh. The longer the fight drew out, the better the old Nord’s chances would be, Reyur knew. He’d lose what scant speed and power he’d had. 

‍

Right now, he was beginning to lose his focus, that life-saving razor’s edge. His vision was doing funny things, receding at the edges, pulsing ever so slightly as when he lay in bed at night at his uncle’s with the light of the hearth peeking through one of the warped wall slats, and his uncle passed by in his midnight pacing and shut out the light.

It occurred to Reyur with a surreal clarity he might die tonight. Yet, there was no panic—the realization was cold and logical, his indifference shocking. If you had a looking glass, you’d recognize in your own eyes the look you’ve seen in the struck-down deer before you slit its throat, Reyur chided himself. Where is your will? Where is your savagery?

‍

Words from Sven’s song came to him unbidden: 

‍

Hear, hear, 

The dying cry out

Violence on the roads

And violence in the towns

‍

O Dragon of Time, 

Great Akatosh, 

Restore what was lost us

From the days when Torygg was king

‍

The words did not give him heart as the songs of battle did for the old, storied warriors. What it did give him was a sense of obligation. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t die because Bolri was expecting him back, and Sven, and his uncle. There was work to do in the morning. Because then the old Nord would go alert the Embershard Gang and there would be reprisals. Not just sacked caravans headed to and from Falkreath with timber. The people of Riverwood would pay. The awful Khajiit, apparently called Ja’dara, wouldn’t be content to simply extort the town any longer, and he and the rest of the soldiers and deserters who’d fled after the Battle by Haemar’s Shame and the razing of Helgen would descend on the town and enforce their will by swordpoint. The scant guardsmen wouldn’t be able to stop them, and the Companions had thus far turned a deaf ear to Riverwood’s petitions, content to sit atop the mounds of septims they’d won in past scraps or from the melees and tournaments that kept them in circuits around the country. 

‍

Reyur cursed himself: if you’re going to be a thinking man, then think, you damned fool. With his waning vision, Reyur looked around the camp. Two tents. The stump, the fire. The dead elf half on his back, in a pool of his dark red blood, which had muddied the earth about him. The old Nord was nervous, so tense he’d leap over Secunda if you could just get him unawares. Reyur thought of something his uncle had told him once, back when he’d been apprenticing as a hunter: all living creatures were made by the gods to face a threat head on. 

‍

At first his uncle had meant to explain the concept of angles and positioning, which were everything for a hunter, but after Reyur had grown some and begun facing the trials of adolescence, his uncle meant its opposite: face your troubles head on.

‍

Angles? Head on? Why not both?

‍

He made up his mind and backpedaled quickly, circling around behind the tent. Warily the old Nord followed him. 

‍

“Thinking of running, are ye? I don’t blame you. Run now, and I may even let you go. Stay and face me, and I’ll cut you up fit for a stew.” 

‍

Keep blabbing, old man. Reyur adjusted his strafing so in following the old Nord came close to the tent. Reyur circled to his left, and the old Nord leaped left to cut him off. He did the same to his right, and the old Nord did likewise. Reyur had one shot at this. His leg was wobbling even now; soon it would give. He made as though he were going to dash left again, and when Roggbald leaped to head him off, Reyur changed levels and disappeared behind the tent, casting away his shield and diving through the tent. The fabric and the poles came crashing down, and his shoulder rammed hard into the old Nord’s legs. The tent’s hide covering blocked him from grabbing the old Nord’s legs, but it didn’t matter. The man was staggered, and this time Reyur remembered to close the distance. Now they were grappling, each man fighting for the other’s weapon with his offhand. They were both grunting and heaving for breath. Blood squelched in the toe of Reyur’s boot. He could smell the old Nord now, that peculiar mix of the outdoors and the musty, bitter sweat of the aging.

‍

Remembering Bolri’s favorite trip, Reyur put his left leg between Roggbald’s and then hooked his opponent’s right. He lifted both their legs for all he was worth, and the both of them went crashing down, with Reyur landing on top. Holding down the old Nord’s sword-hand with his offhand, Reyur began to club about the man’s head with the ax. Though he brought up his forearm to block, the ax’s top-heavy weight brought each blow closer to the man’s face. The first cut wasn’t very deep, just above the brow, and the second and third thumped off the leather helm, which had turned askew in their falling so the nose guard was crooked and useless. Gathering all his might, despite his utter exhaustion, Reyur leveled as hard a blow as he could muster with that clumsy ax his father had once used as a sapper during the Great War, destroying bridges spanning the Niben to halt the Thalmor advance. 

‍

When the ax came down and hit the old Nord between the eyes, sending his nose off to one side and splitting the skull, it may well have been the first time the instrument had cleaved man or mer instead of wood. The expression on the old Nord’s face was one of immense surprise, as though the ax had imparted to him all the heretofore forbidden wisdom of death and the realms of the dead and dying. When Reyur unstuck the ax from the old Nord’s skull, the man’s good eye unfocused into a lifeless daze, seeing nothing, empty now of all the things his mother must have, some long time ago, taught him to see and say. Tomorrow the ravens would come and worry both eyes, the good and the crooked, from their sockets.

When it was all over, Reyur sat atop the stump, his hide skirt hiked so he could dress his wound. The cut had exposed white meat, and Reyur took a fortifying swig of the healing potion he’d pulled from his satchel before dousing the wound directly. He clenched his teeth against the sting and the utter weirdness of flesh working itself back together. The aftertaste was bitter and familiar on his tongue. 

‍

Sitting there now by the dying embers and surrounded by the dead, Reyur thought of what he would tell Bolri, Sven. How to explain any of it, the immense relief, the confusing stab of pity when he considered the inert bodies. He swigged again, and the taste of the potion brought him back to afternoons he and Bolri and Sven had spent lying beneath the spruce by the old mill, plucking the petals off blue mountain flowers and chewing them to make their mouths go numb. How, laughing, they would lie in the grass and probe their unfeeling lips with their fingers. 

‍

Those days, the ones before the war and before Helgen, seemed not only a long time ago, they seemed to have happened on some other plane of Oblivion, to some other person. Whoever Reyur would be when he limped back into Riverwood, he would not be the same dream-ridden boy Bolri had loved to tease. He now knew something she didn’t, had gone where she hadn’t yet gone. Though he might try, Sven could never commit this night to any verse or song.

‍

Through the trees Ilinalta shimmered in the combined glow of Masser and Secunda. The surface rippled, probably a bass downing a dartfly. Suddenly Reyur remembered how the elf had been carving something before the hare had spooked. He looked beside him on the stump. A figurine. He took it in his hands, held it before his face. It seemed to be the rudimentary figure of a king, the jagged crown of legend atop his featureless wooden face. Pity for the elf had started within him, but when he willed it away, it went. With mute interest he watched it go.  

‍

Somewhere wolves were beginning to howl; men’s voices were on the wind. Rising, he pocketed the figurine, and leaving the dead to their own council, he limped off into the living, breathing night.