I spent most days training, sparring and learning from some of the greatest teachers and swordsmen in the Empire. The feel of Sunchild was unmatched and as Jauffre had promised the sword seemed nigh-indestructible, taking my poor-attempts of its use without the slightest blemish to show for it. For the time we remained in the fortress I felt my skill grow, and with it a newfound understanding of my new abilities and power. I could hit harder, strike more precisely and move quicker than I could have ever believed possible. This knowledge however made it even more infuriating when nearly every one of the Blades could outmatch me with technique and skill alone.
The thirst however needed to be sated, and I found myself taking leave of the fortress under the guise of hunting. Every few days I would travel through the gates with bow in hand and practice moving through the wilds dressed in my new clothing and armour. Each time I would come back with a fresh kill, either the form of a mountain goat or deer, or some hardy breed of rabbit or quail that seemed to breed in abundance despite the seemingly desolate terrain. Most of the times I slaked my thirst on the animals I hunted, which assisted in keeping my equipment blood-stain free but only went a little way towards keeping the bloodlust at bay. Just over a week after arriving at Cloud Ruler I came across an unfortunate highwayman fleeing from his latest pickings on the road north to the border of Skyrim and the town of Riverwood. Before either of us had realised it he had fired his crossbow in desperation, seeing in me the armoured form of a bounty hunter or member of the highway guards and not wishing to be taken for punishment.
Unfortunately for him however I turned out to be something far worse. Before I had realised what I had been doing I had stepped aside from the flickering crossbow bolt and had borne him down hard under my bodyweight, teeth sinking to the gums in his throat. A moment of struggle and a sudden crack of bone announced that yet again I had underestimated my new strength but it didn’t stop me from draining the broken-necked corpse dry and leaving me disgustingly sated.
The Blades made us feel welcome, even Viconia despite her natural inclination to keep everyone at arm’s length. Between the physical and emotional distance she placed between herself and others she still partook in training with her own new sword and seemed to revel in the challenge of sparring some of the greatest fighters in the world. Even with her natural skill and ability she struggled against most of the instructors, but neither of us could hold a torch to Belisarius’ skill with a blade. He made it look ridiculously easy as he stepped and weaved and parried my attacks without the slightest undue effort, even when fully dressed in his distinctive splint mail.
It was late in the afternoon, nearly a full fortnight since our arrival at Cloud Ruler and once again Belisarius was making a complete mockery of not only my skill with a blade but my unnatural vampiric speed and agility. Time and time again I would cut and slice out only to have him turn aside or flick his own blade against Sunchild, trading blows until I either found myself on my back or with the edge of his katana resting against my throat. This time however he swept me off my feet with a flickering movement while ducking under my strike. He used his momentum to not only knock me down but slice downwards with his magnificent katana. The strike would’ve cleaved my head from its shoulders if not for his perfect control, not once even drawing blood despite how close brought the razor edge to my skin.
“You’re slowly getting better.” He said as he assisted in hauling me to my feet. “I thank Talos every day that you aren’t a legionary however.”
“Why? Because I would be the one putting you on your arse?”
He laughed, flicking his sword out away from his body in such a way as to remove blood and gore from its surface. Spinning it deftly in his hand he drew the blade across his body, guiding the blunt reverse edge in the web of the hand holding the top of the sheath. Then, in a single smooth motion he reversed the direction of the blade as the tip reached the sheath’s opening, locking it away with a click of metal. It was a single effortless move that he could’ve performed blind and deaf and belied the thousands of hours of practice that he had undertaken in the years of his life.
“Hardly, but unlike those heavy footed bastards you can actually be taught some form of footwork that may save your life. Don’t get me wrong, the legions can and will annihilate anything they face in open battle but if you get the individual soldiers alone?” He shrugged. “It’s a slaughter.”
I nodded soberly, the old stories of the disasters over the ages in places like Blackmarsh and Valenwood were told to every recruit as lessons to what happens when the shield wall and formations are broken. Several times in history the light moving Bosmer were able to overcome the cumbersome formations in their homeland with hit and run raids. And in Blackmarsh until the Legion changed tactics and equipment the tribes would simply wait until the legionaries would tire before attacking. Many hundreds of legionaries had lost their lives over the centuries from ill-equipped argonians kicking them into soft ground and marsh where they would drown in the armour or be finished with flashing blades.
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“In our line of work it is rare for us to fight together, and so we must rely on fancy footwork and agility before relying on a skin of steel. The legions can rely on their armour because that is what they do. They aren’t fancy Breton knights with their mounted cavalry charges, or orcish berserker rushing headlong into battle. They are the Empire’s mill-wheel of destruction that slowly crushes its foes into powder.”
“And if the Blades came together to fight against an even number of legionaries?” I asked him aloud with the rhetorical question.
“In formation the Blades would be slaughtered against a legion shieldwall. We’re good but the legion is designed for a straight up fight. You give us some manoeuvrability however and we’d make it costly at least.”
Nearby Viconia was sparring against a pair of the younger Blades, their swords striking and blurring together in streaks of silver and ebony as she held her own against the two agents. It was an even match and Viconia seemed to be utterly enjoying herself with the challenge posed by her pair of adversaries.
“And against the Velmer?”
Belisarius openly blanched at that. “I always thought we had the monopoly on skilled fighters in the world, but if they are all like your friend there, then I wouldn’t put a rusty septim against our chances in an even fight.”
As we watched she managed to skilfully disarm one of her opponents, flicking his katana away with the gleaming edge of Dragonbane and knocking him to his back. The other Blade, stepping in to strike missed entirely as Viconia gracefully flipped off the ground with her free hand, ducking under the strike and sweeping the second Blade off her feet as well. All three stopped at the end of the practice and I could see Viconia’s hair flowing in the breeze as she fought bareheaded, panting with the exertion and sweating even in the cold mountain air.
The numbers of Blades in the fortress had grown over the previous fortnight and now over fifty of them moved and training and ate within the heated halls. They slept, trained and rotated on sentry duty over the valleys below, ensuring that nothing and no one would approach unannounced. Messengers from below would come up almost several times a day, saddlebags brimming with messages and notes from agents scattered throughout the Empire for Jauffre’s eyes. The Grandmaster of the Blades easily knew more of what was occurring throughout the Empire than a dozen or more members of the Elder Council.
What snippets of information we heard or were provided were troubling. In the wake of the murders of the Emperor and his heirs, unrest was increasingly building throughout the Empire. Plots, both imaginary and real were being investigated and fingers pointed in all directions at those deemed responsible. The destruction of an entire city at the claws and teeth of daedra certainly didn’t help the situation and soon accusing eyes were glancing in the direction of Summerset Isle and Red Mountain. Both the Altmer and the great houses of Morrowind were the racially obvious choices for intrigue and consorting with daedra but from what Jauffre had gleaned from the reports of hundreds of agents, both the Altmer and Dunmer were just as confused and concerned as the Empire was. Neither province wanted the full might of the Imperial Legion arrayed against them in retaliation for perceived crimes and as far as anyone could tell they too were actively seeking those responsible with almost undue haste.
The list of suspects seemed to be dwindling rapidly but Jauffre’s mood in particular was souring as day after day. Hundreds of messages and notes from other Blades did little more than strike names from the list of those potentially responsible. As of yet there was no clue on who exactly was the guilty party. While the days lengthened and winter approached with no progress on finding the assassins the Empire slowly began to decay.
The Elder Council was stagnated and wracked with indecision. Where they should’ve been choosing a leader to take over in the growing crisis they instead bickered and jostled for power and position amongst themselves. Individual counts, dukes, kings and rulers politicked and quarrelled, spent favours like septims and backstabbed each other figuratively and in at least one case literally. No one was rising to claim the throne or even take proper stewardship of it due to the fact that nearly everyone else on the council was reaching for the same goal with their hands so firmly planted on the rungs of power their feet were free to kick at those below. The only individual who seemed to be above the petty power mongering was High Councillor Ocato who’s pleas for a unified Empire was consistently being shouted down by the others.
And everywhere the cracks were forming. Blackmarsh, ever fractious and brought into the empire with treaty and diplomacy was already looking to secede. Now that the firm rule of the Emperor was no longer holding them back against the depravations of Dunmer Slavers of House Dres the beginning of a militia or resistance was beginning to take shape. The Dunmer themselves were already squabbling despite Lord Vivec’s attempts to control the unruly houses. The wounds of the Nerevarine’s return and the fall of Dagoth Ur was still fresh in the minds with only a few years passing since the fall of the sixth house. In faraway places like Highrock, the Orcish Strongholds were already finding themselves in renewed fighting and raids against the encroachment of the Bretons.
The threads were unravelling and what was worse, the armoured might of the Legions remained behind the stone walls of their fortresses and did nothing. Some even going as far as reducing the number of patrols throughout the countryside. Without the authority of the Emperor or someone nominated to lead in his stead the Legions sat idle and no one, not even local governors and members of the Council could order the Legions to quell the growing discontent. Banditry and animal attacks were already on the rise in just a few weeks of idleness. The mightiest military that had ever existed in the history of Tamriel seemed fated to slowly rot and rust away behind walls while the Empire fell apart around them.
