Chapter Text
By the time she arrived back at the Reach camp, the sun had already begun its descent. The guards at the perimeter stood taller when they saw her. Word had clearly reached them already.
Galmar was leaning over the war table with Ulfric at his side. They looked up when she entered the command tent, her cloak stirring the dusty air.
“We got the shipment,” she said, tossing the Imperial manifest onto the table. “Ralof fought like Ysgramor himself. The Imperials won’t be delivering anything else to Markarth for a while.”
Ulfric met her gaze, and something behind his eyes softened. “You’re relentless,” he said, low.
“I'm yours to wield, my Jarl,” she replied without hesitation.
Galmar let out a grunt that might’ve been a chuckle. “That deserves a drink, it does.”
Ulfric didn’t look away from her. “That deserves the world.”
The next afternoon...
Another day, another victory.
The snow had stopped falling by the time Sáraeth returned to the Reach camp. The sky overhead was the color of a forge gone cold, flat and iron-toned, but the air still reeked of blood and smoke from Fort Sungard thanks to the handful of soldiers that had returned to camp with her. She slid off her horse without ceremony, her cloak blackened and sword-torn in places where Imperials had managed to land blows before dying. Her armor bore new scratches, and her right pauldron was dented from a hammer strike she'd absorbed head-on.
She didn’t pause to rest. Her eyes scanned the camp, quick and hard. She saw foot soldiers laughing around a fire. Two Stormcloak medics tending to the wounded. A pack of lean horses, stamping and breathing hard. Galmar's war tent, its flaps drawn open.
Ulfric's horse was gone.
Her stride toward the tent was as silent and swift as an arrow loosed from a bow. Galmar, standing inside at his war table and mid-sentence to one of the captains, turned at the sound of her approach.
"Ah, my lady Dragonborn," he began, pride lacing his voice. "Your taking of Sungard was nothing short of--"
"Where is he?"
The question cut through his words like a sword through fog. The captain beside him had the good sense to excuse himself. Galmar, for all his battle-hardened girth and gravel-thick voice, faltered beneath the weight of Sáraeth's gaze.
She was not tall. Not broad-shouldered like most of his warriors. But she carried power like others carried weapons. Wrapped in silence. Borne in storms.
"The Jarl returned to Windhelm," Galmar said carefully. "On business most urgent. He did not say more."
She stared him down, waiting. He held the line for all of three seconds.
"I do not know more," he said, bristling. "But I do know he’d want you there. Go to Windhelm. Inform the jarl of our success here today. That’s an order."
But she was already gone.
The Reach disappeared behind her in a rush of snow and sound. She changed horses once at a waystation, and again at the base of the Velothi mountains. Both beasts were left well-fed and winded, and both looked after her as she departed with the same bewildered awe: something half-starstruck, half-wary, as though they’d just been ridden by a storm given form.
When she reached Windhelm, dusk had swallowed the mountains. The wind tore through the valley like it wanted to warn her away.
The drawbridge was up.
The stables were deserted. No smoke from chimneys. No guards at the gates. The docks were abandoned, boats unmanned, even Gjalund's vessel strangely still. No Argonians, no dockhands, no distant clang of forge or hammer.
He had shut the city tight.
Sáraeth didn’t even hesitate.
She turned her mount toward the narrow pass to the north, slipping between slabs of ice-streaked stone. A goat bleated and fled at her approach. She found the crevasse halfway up the ravine wall, barely wide enough for a Bosmer. She dismounted and smacked her horse's flank, sending it back down the trail. Then she slid inside the crevasse like water through a crack in the stone.
It was dark. Ancient. She lit no torch. The tunnel beyond smelled of mildew and dust older than most holds. Webs snagged at her fingers. A skeever hissed from a shadow. She moved like she belonged there.
After three-quarters of an hour with torchlight as her only companion, Sáraeth found the pull chain by instinct, half-buried beneath lichen and time. When she pulled it, a stone door groaned open with the weight of a forgotten age. She slipped inside, vanishing into Windhelm’s bones.
The tunnels wound through the rock in a path only the eldest of those born to Windhelm might have known; a secret she had learned from Wuunferth. Past the vermin she moved. Past the bones. Past the sleeping things. Until the stone gave way to a space she knew: the undercroft beneath the palace. The jail.
She emerged through a broken lattice behind a stack of hay and barrels. Her footfalls were near-silent, but the guard on duty still spun, one hand to his sword--and froze. His eyes widened.
"My Lady," he breathed. Then, with more composure: "The Jarl said to expect you. He awaits in his private quarters."
She said nothing. She was already moving. Toward the only man in all of Skyrim who could ever make her feel like the world had stopped spinning when he left it. And gods help him if he thought she would wait quietly outside his storm.
The firelight in his quarters danced against stone and tapestry. Furs lay scattered over the bed, thick and heavy, and they rose and fell with the weight of the man curled beneath them.
He was asleep. For once, utterly so.
His hair was mussed, golden strands fallen across his face. One hand curled into a loose fist, resting near the edge of the furs. His brow furrowed even in slumber, as if war did not release him even here.
She crossed to him before she could stop herself. No thought, just the pull of something deeper. She reached out, hand hovering over his face—then brushed the hair gently back.
His hand snapped forward and seized her wrist.
She froze.
"That is a very good way to get yourself killed," he growled, voice low with sleep and steel.
She didn’t flinch. Only arched a brow. "So is that."
He opened his eyes then. Smirked. "You remembered the tales of Ysgramor’s Escape from our Unliving friend." He sat up slowly, releasing her wrist.
She knelt before him. "Fort Sungard is ours."
He nodded once. "I know. The city trembled with the news."
Her gaze hardened. "Why did you leave the Reach? Why is the city sealed, its fires dark and its windows shuttered?"
He sighed, the weight settling back across his shoulders like armor.
"A dragon. It awoke while I was by Galmar’s side in the Reach camp and began circling my hold. A courier arrived with the news and I left immediately. The dragon attacked not long after I returned. The scouts believe it roosts now on Mount Anthor. My people are afraid to light fires, fearing it will see and descend again."
She said nothing for a long beat. Then, "So you drew me back here to kill it. That it will no longer terrorize our city."
He looked at her. "Our city, is it, then, Dragonborn?"
A flicker of embarrassment crossed her face. It made her look younger. A flash of the maiden before the war. "I will return with that dragon's soul in my blood."
She turned to leave. His hand caught hers. Turned her back. And then he kissed her. Fierce. Commanding. Like a storm breaking against stone. And she answered it like fire answers wind.
When they parted, he cupped her cheek. "You will save us all," he whispered. "Now begone, lest the dragon be left to its devices merely because I cannot let you go."