Chapter Text
Vash watched the spell form in his student’s hand. He leaned closer to observe its flickering form. It jumped and jittered in place, refracting the light from the Hall of the Elements, with additional sparks of red darting around within. The construction of the spell had been measured and calm, reflecting the way the student, Emelia, approached all her spellwork. In a pitched battle, perhaps, it would be too slow, but in the controlled conditions of the College, it was close to flawless.
He nodded, and Emelia cast the spell. She disappeared from in front of him, leaving only the telltale shimmer that marked a mage under the cover of an invisibility spell.
‘Very good,’ said Vash. He walked slowly around her, his eyes struggling to keep track of which exact piece of space she was occupying. Emelia had only joined the College a month prior, but already her craft was showing noticeable improvement. She was a youthful and fresh-faced Imperial, though something about her grey eyes gave Vash the very specific feeling that he ought to take a step away from her, but that if he did so he would trip over an unseen obstacle and end up falling on his behind. He had attempted to explain this feeling to Tolfdir, but the old mage had only frowned and asked if the Archmage was getting enough sleep.
It was then that Tolfdir himself came into the Hall, two female orcs trailing behind him. One was dressed in furs and a long black cloak with a hood, while the other, almost a head taller, wore leather armour and had an orcish longsword slung over her back.
‘Archmage, apologies for interrupting,’ said Tolfdir.
‘Not at all,’ said Vash, who had long given up on trying to get Tolfdir to address him simply by name. ‘I don’t think there are any more improvements I can make to Emelia’s technique.’
Tolfdir looked directly at the shimmer that was Emelia. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Fine work, very fine. I wager even Drevis would be impressed.’
Emelia cancelled her spell and reappeared fully in the room. The two orc guests both flinched. A small smile came across Emelia’s face, and she inclined her head towards Tolfdir.
‘Thank you both,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I’ll go have a word with Drevis, see if there’s anything I can teach him.’
‘Surely you mean the reverse,’ said Tolfdir.
‘Of course,’ said Emelia, still smiling. ‘A slip of tongue.’ She exited the Hall, her natural tread making almost no sound.
‘I believe you’ll have command of the College for a few days, Tolfdir,’ said Vash, smiling behind him at the two orcs. ‘I have some other business to attend to.’
‘The, um, orc business you told me of, Archmage?’ asked Tolfdir.
‘Indeed,’ said Vash. ‘Thank you, Tolfdir.’
Tolfdir, seemingly unsure of what else to add, smiled at everybody and left the hall. After he heard the exterior door close, Vash gave the newcomers a short bow.
‘You are the aid promised by Malacath, I assume?’ he asked.
‘Nice place,’ said the shorter orc, looked up at the great space of the Hall. ‘Shame you gotta slog through all those fuckin snowdrifts to get here.’
‘What Muzgu is trying to say is yes,’ said the other orc. ‘And I am Yanakh. We have been charged with assisting you, as agent of Malacath in this province, with improving the lot of Skyrim’s orcs.’
‘You don’t look like his type,’ said Muzgu, looking Vash up and down. ‘Usually goes for the big beefy idiots with axes.’
Vash held out his right hand and summoned a bound handaxe into it, its handle and blade made of glowing blue light.
‘Huh,’ said Muzgu. ‘Well, that’ll have to do.’
‘It is an axe,’ said Yanakh, restraining a smile at her companion.
Muzgu sighed. ‘Alright, how are we doing this? I can take orders, but only up to a point.’
‘I was hoping for more of a collaborative approach,’ said Vash. He cleared his throat. ‘I was honoured, of course, to be chosen by Malacath, but I feel somewhat out of my depth. Any assistance you can provide would be most welcome.’
‘We look forward to working with you,’ said Yanakh.
Muzgu rolled her eyes. ‘We came straight here,’ she said. ‘Been in Skyrim for all of a couple of days. Don’t even know where the strongholds are.’
‘Ah,’ said Vash, going through the pockets of his robes. He drew out a map of Skyrim on which he had marked the locations of the province’s four orc strongholds: Narzulbur, not far south-east from the city of Windhelm; Largashbur, in the south of the Rift; Dushnikh Yal, in the harsh wilds of the Reach; and Mor Khazgur, in the north-west of Skyrim, where the Reach gave way to Haafingar. ‘I thought we could do a sort of tour,’ he added, gesturing at the map. ‘Starting with Narzulbur and sort of working around.’
‘Get the lay of the land,’ said Yanakh, nodding and peering at the map.
‘Exactly,’ said Vash.
Together the three orcs headed out of the College, trod single file across the bridge—Yanakh keeping a tight grip on the railing—and went down into Winterhold proper. One of the improvements that Vash and Jarl Kraldar had managed to get off the ground was a stable with a carriage that could get people more easily to the other hold capitals. At this precise moment, however, the carriage and its driver was nowhere to be seen. So they headed south on foot, the snow not thick enough to slow their progress, though Muzgu still grumbled about the cold.
‘Malacath said the strongholds would know we were coming,’ said Vash, as they walked. ‘But nevertheless I sent letters ahead, explaining the situation.’
Muzgu scrunched up her face. ‘The stronghold orcs prefer dealing face-to-face.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ said Yanakh.
Vash receded into himself for a time and they walked in silence. He had still been in his teens when he left Orsinium, feeling constricted and out of place. Between then and discovering the College, he had wandered mostly alone, learning bits and pieces of magic here and there, hiring himself out as a bodyguard in High Rock when he needed gold for some more books. His interactions with other orcs in the past decade formed such a tiny percentage of all the people he had met and spoken with. And yet Malacath had chosen him. He couldn’t understand it.
‘I dunno how being Archmage works, but you seem young for it,’ said Muzgu.
Vash managed a smile. ‘The grey beard fools people,’ he said. ‘A side effect of the Ashpit.’
‘So you really met Malacath,’ said Yanakh.
‘She’s read your book,’ said Muzgu. ‘She was very excited to meet you.’ There was a pause. ‘I didn’t read it,’ she added.
‘We’ve only heard his voice,’ said Yanakh. ‘To actually travel his realm, it’s amazing.’
‘It’s not something I could recommend,’ said Vash.
In truth, he had almost died there in at least two different ways. He had plummeted through what seemed to be a void without end, choking on the ash that filled the air. It had been a few months prior, and the experience showed no sign of becoming any less vivid in his head. He saw it when he closed his eyes, felt the ash in his lungs and the fear of some invisible ground rushing up to reach him.
He had been in Helgen with Gylhain, the Dragonborn, part of a great force she had put together to fight back against the Thalmor’s attempt to open an Oblivion gate in the abandoned town. The gate, of course, could only be closed from the other side, so several of the defenders, Gylhain and Vash included, had stepped through into varied hells, scattered away from each other into different realms.
The gate was closed, but upon returning to twice-battered Helgen, none of Vash’s friends had wished to speak of what they had seen on the other side. Vash, on the other hand, had written a book, putting it together quickly in the weeks following the battle and sending it to the Imperial City for publication. He was surprised to meet someone from outside of the College who actually heard of his little account, Through Fog and Ash.
Returning to the present, Vash noticed that Yanakh’s mouth was opening and then closing again repeatedly, a frown set on her face. He asked her if there was a problem, but that only made her mouth shut and her eyes become fixed on her feet. Muzgu sighed.
‘Your name,’ she said.
‘It’s Vash,’ said Vash. ‘Did I not say that? I’m so sorry, I thought—’
‘Not that, your stronghold name,’ said Muzgu.
‘Vash gro-Nul,’ said Vash.
‘Nul,’ repeated Muzgu. ‘Of no stronghold. Why?’
Vash scratched at his beard. ‘I took it—so many years ago. I was young,’ he said. ‘I left Orsinium and wanted a way to live that wasn’t orcish. It was a mistake, but it’s stuck.’
‘You didn’t, um, sign that on the letters you sent to the strongholds, did you?’ asked Yanakh.
‘Yes,’ said Vash.
‘Oh, they’re not going to like that,’ said Muzgu.
Vash wanted to sink down beneath the snow and not come up again. It was so early and he had already made so many mistakes, seemed to have made them before he even knew he would be measured by them.
‘What about you two?’ he asked, to distract himself. ‘Where do you hail from?’
‘Muzgu gra-Lagtha,’ said Muzgu. ‘In High Rock. Nice enough, for a stronghold. My mother more or less ran the place. Left as soon as I could. Ran with some shitty little bandit clans here and there. With the Thieves Guild in Cyrodiil, briefly. Very briefly. Then Malacath found me.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘Or I found him. Depends who you ask.’
‘She is being modest,’ said Yanakh. ‘The warrior orcs of Lagtha are legendary in certain parts of High Rock, mostly because of her mother.’
‘She’s still alive, far as I know,’ said Muzgu. She sniffed with great disdain. ‘She goes in for honourable battles, facing your foes, that kind of thing. We don’t get on.’
‘She sounds amazing,’ said Yanakh.
‘She’s the most unbearable orc I’ve ever met. Your turn now.’
Yanakh coughed and then spoke. ‘Yanakh gra-Domas,’ she said.
‘That’s a Redguard name,’ said Vash, his head jerking up in surprise.
‘It is my stronghold,’ said Yanakh.
‘She means hers in the sense that she built the fuckin thing,’ said Muzgu. ‘Now who’s being modest.’
‘You founded a stronghold?’ asked Vash.
‘Not alone,’ said Yanakh. ‘My brother Gorka, and a Redguard bloodkin called Balthasar. It is a strong place, carved onto the coast.’
After a silence, Vash added, ‘But you left.’
Yanakh stared into the nothing of the middle distance, then shook herself and shifted her view to the great snowy peaks above them.
‘Balthasar and I,’ she said, ‘we—’
‘Holy shit!’ said Muzgu. ‘Is that a dragon up there?’
In seconds, Vash had hardened his skin, summoned a huge bound spear in one hand, and prepared a ward in the other. His eyes frantically searched the skies, but he could see no great flapping wings, nor hear that roar that had struck such fear into Skyrim. It took Vash a while to calm his heartbeat and dismiss his spells, and longer to realise he’d been manipulated into a distraction.
‘Very quick on the draw, aren’t you,’ said Muzgu.
‘The dragons are mostly dead,’ said Vash, leading them on down the road, the words coming out very quickly. ‘Sometimes there are reports of one near the Throat of the World, or far in the north-west, but otherwise, they seem to be gone.’
Yanakh smiled at Muzgu, then said, ‘Speaking of bloodkin, have you met many of that name in Skyrim?’
‘Only one,’ said Vash. ‘Gylhain, the Dragonborn.’
‘The humans do tend to leave any nasty orc bits out of their stories, don’t they,’ said Muzgu. ‘Do you know where at?’
‘Dushnikh Yal,’ said Vash. ‘It was before I knew her.’
‘She was with you at Helgen, when you went through to the Ashpit,’ said Muzgu.
‘Though she went somewhere else,’ said Vash. ‘I thought you didn’t read my book,’ he added, trying a smirk.
Muzgu ignored him and asked, ‘Do you know where she went?’
‘The Deadlands, I presume.’
‘I mean afterwards.’
Vash’s face set into a frown as he remembered how tired, both physically and mentally, the Dragonborn had been after the Battle of Helgen. ‘I don’t know and I don’t wish to,’ he said. ‘If anyone deserves some peace and quiet, it’s her.’
‘But no rest for us wicked souls,’ said Muzgu.
Vash nodded. ‘There is Malacath’s work to be done,’ he said, and if he put enough verve into his voice, he could almost convince himself that this was what he wanted.