It had been too long, Talion discovered as the days crept along during his stay in Kaer Trolde, since he had the chance to enjoy real air.
Clear air, cold air. He breathed in deeply, savoring the chilling bite that swept into his lungs and the tiny pricks on his cheeks. His hood was drawn back so that Talion could also enjoy the rays of the winter sun. It was a cloudless day and the sky was blue above.
He was perched on the crenelations of a watchtower that was built into walls of the fjord that was the entrance and exit to Kaer Trolde's harbor. So high was this watchtower located that not even the gulls made their nests here. From this vantage point, Talion watched and directed his gaze as he willed.
He saw the ships and fishing boats that trundled into and out of the harbor, and he knew that the captains were driven by many motives. Some were driven by hunger or by greed and the rare few sailed for nothing more than the love of the craft. Talion saw their base motives through the sight and cataloged them for later should he need it.
Talion did not believe he would, for the captains he had picked out were the ones suited to his needs, but he of all men knew the priceless value of having a back up.
Talion breathed deep again, enjoying the simple feelings of life that had been leached away from him for so long that he had forgotten he had ever had them. He was more now. More solid, more present in the waking world. His ring was repaired and its strength redoubled. Resplendent in power and form again. He looked at the golden ring on his hand again.
Ah how it shone until this cold winter sun. Talion admired the way the two snakes held the ring's shining orange gem in their fangs. For a blink of the eye Talion was transported back to the memory of that shining circle he had encased the world in, where the horizon was limitless and ever twisting back in on itself but for the limits he had imposed on the firmament.
A blink later and the vision was gone but Talion's heart was warmed nonetheless. He looked back up at the sun. It was near its zenith for the day. That meant he had a meeting to preside over.
Talion straightened out of the crouch he had been resting in, pulling up his hood as he moved, and looked down. It was a very far fall to the water's surface.
Talion jumped anyway. The chill of the air became daggers that stabbed into him, the wind sought to blind him and the forces of the world sought to send him careening into the waves rushing towards him and dash Talion into bits of gristle.
Such a thing did not happen because mid fall, Talion exerted his power and with a but a twist, his corporeal form twisted and tumbled into a black shadow, impervious to all material harm. This was an old trick for Talion, having learned this power in his early days of lordship over Minas Morgul through studying the myriad tomes and scrolls of lore stored in the tower's vaults.
Now he soared instead of fell, and with the flight granted to him, Talion traced his way down to the harbor city below. He flew among the chimney smoke from houses and the blacksmith forges to disguise himself. This city was mundane in its activities and Talion's current physical form was anything but. When he arrived at his destination, he plunged down into a side alley and with another twist of power, reformed himself.
His new black cloak, made of satin with silver hatch stitching on the edge and from fabrics donated by Clan Tordarroch, fluttered briefly in a phantom wind before settling down. Talion was rather proud of this new cloak. For one it reminded him of a cloak he had once made in remembrance of someone or something, he couldn't remember the reason why. Secondly, and more importantly, it was a profound demonstration of Talion's position of power in the Skelligans from Clan Tordarroch who had sworn loyalty to him in the wake of his slaying of the Ice Giant of Undvik.
The wives and daughters of his new warriors had sewn it and presented it to Talion before he had departed Undvik with Jarl Harald and both of their accompanying escorts. Since his arrival at Kaer Trolde close to a month ago, the rest of Talion's oathsworn warriors and their kin having trickled into the town in the following days.
Talion exited the alley he had landed in, paying no mind to the way the crowds on the street recoiled away from him at first sight, and walked to the right. He passed by a merchant stall, a barber and a fishmonger before reaching his destination. The tavern was one of several in this section of docks that Talion's forces and budding allies had taken over. As such, two of his blackshields stood guard.
"Vildkonung." The guards greeted Talion with salutes. Talion returned the gesture with a nod, entering into the shade of the tavern.
The tavern was packed, Talion noted, but he still had plenty of room to walk to the hearth when his presence was announced by the second pair of his blackshields rapping their spears on the floor to grab the attention of the tavern's occupants. Talion did not care that they shied away from him.
He glided across the stone without a sound, despite the heavy armor he was clad in and the fabric of his cloak that should have rustled with his steps. Instead, his cloak hung limp, as still as the grave in spite of Talion's movement. He saw in his other sight some of the men in the tavern making peculiar gestures as he passed them.
Then Talion was at the tavern's hearth, a cluster of seven men stepped forward from the crowd to gather around him. Supplicants before a king.
Three of the men he was familiar with, as these three were the leaders that had emerged among his skelligans. Talion wouldn't call what he knew of the groups to be factions, maybe they were more like cults. Said 'cults' had gathered in response to what his skelligers thought Talion was, one of their wraiths of Morhogg. Talion gathered that Morhogg was a Sauron like figure to the skelligers through the memories he had glimpsed from them. The comparison was a source of grim amusement to Talion.
The largest group of the roughly nine hundred skelligers that had sworn blood loyalty to Talion consisted of those of that train of thought. Talion was to them a servant of this Morhogg. They were indebted to Talion for his slaying of the Ice Giant and were honored bound to follow him for this great life debt. By doing so, they were now sworn to Morhogg and would fight for this entity in some great war at the end of time. Talion was still unsure about what that meant. The Morhoggians were lead, surprisingly, by Erik Angsbornsson who Talion had first run into when he arrived in this land.
The second group in the skelligers was the group who called themselves the Wild Men, Vildkarrls in the skelligan jargon. Talion knew they weren't actual wild men as the skelligans considered them, they wouldn't have been part of Clan Tordarroch to begin with if they were. His Wild Men had, apparently, developed the belief that Talion wasn't a servant of Morhogg, but rather a new spirit/god/fae (the meaning behind some Skelligan words continued to escape Talion) that had emerged. As their Vildkonung, Talion would lead them on a glorious hunt in life and the afterlife. The Wild Men were lead by the few druids who had sworn to Talion.
The smallest cult in his skelligers hadn't coined themselves a name yet but Talion had observed them just as he had all his new followers. They were a more extreme group of the Morhoggians. These warriors said, as Talion understood it, that since they were sworn to a wraith of Morhogg, they were damned and the faster they died in Talion's service, thereby fulfilling their life debt to him, the less tained their souls would be when their judgement day came in the afterlife.
Talion found this third group the most concerning. Not for their religious crisis they suffered, Talion couldn't care less, but for the fact that they sought to die so quickly in his service, that was cause for concern. Talion resolved again to watch these death seekers closely, their deaths no longer belonged to them, they belonged to Talion. He knew such thoughts were right, felt the certainty of it in his heart.
However Talion had the four other groups represented in the tavern he had much less control over, yet. These were the continental exiles that Talion had been wooing since his knowledge of the land, the world he had arrived in and bound himself to had been expanded. First in the chambers and libraries of King Bran's hall and then through the gossip of merchants and traders he had stalked in the day and read the memories of during the night.
He had done the same to these men, dipping into their minds while they slept to fish the knowledge he needed. Talion left no commanded or trace of his will in their minds, such a violation he would never commit, but he knew that it was always better to have an advantage.
Talion knew these exiles. He knew their intimate desires and passions, what drove them to cluster in taverns that stunk of salt and seaweed to fruitlessly plan and scheme and rage their days away. He knew how to turn all that to his will and bind these exiles to his goals.
"Hail Wraith Lord." A man in fine, if slightly weathered, clothing greeted Talion. He had an average build and face, brown hair that was slicked back and hazel eyes, with a pointed goatee. Talion saw the glint of mail at the neck of his tunic and the man was armed with a thrusting sword.
Sir Goidemar Baursald of Dorian was the leader of the Temerian exiles in Skellige, with a company nearly a hundred and thirty strong answering to his word. Fifteen knights, squires and cavalrymen were among his ranks, though Talion knew that they were lacking in mounts.
Talion nodded at Goidemar's greeting and when the three other exilic leaders made their greetings, he nodded to them as well.
Nine Aedirnian knights had elected a Sir Aldwold of Aldersburg as their mouth. Talion saw that all nine were present in the tavern. Unlike the Temerians, they had preserved their mounts in their flight from the mainland. They had also come to the tavern in full plate, having done a passable job of maintaining it to Talion's eye.
Mathen of Verden gave a much more coarse greeting than the knights and his gambeson was much rattier than the knight's attire. Mathen then daubed a thin line of white powder on the back of his hand, and snorted it. Talion knew the man had a liking to this substance, which he believed to be called fisstech. This would make Mathen easy to control if Talion could secure a large enough stockpile in the future, much like the orc captains and warchiefs that had an over fondness for grog and would give their swords to the side that could provide the largest amount of that foul and often explosive liquid.
Captain Oldo's words were as strange as always, heavily peppered with words that Talion couldn't quite understand. That was fine, all Talion needed the man to do was sail and Oldo was practically a spirit of the sea in Talion's sight. He would do.
A norma man might feel compelled to say something, to break the silence that had fallen after the exiles had spoken. Talion was no longer normal. Their desires had as much effect as the words Talion had spoken to them in driving the men to meet him here today. They would speak first, he was sure of it.
He was right.
"Well, do you have the goods?" Mathen of Verden said forcefully, spittle flying. This was his usual manner of speaking but even so, the pecking order needed to be established.
Talion did not move in the slightest, but all the same, the heat vanished from the tavern. The hearth's flames turned dull and began sputtering. The sconces on the walls died down to smallest of embers. The air became gray as if a mist had swung in from the sea unexpectedly.
Then Talion relaxed the finger of power he had curled, and all that faded away and the tavern was warm and welcoming once again. The men inside it remained chilled to the bone.
"..my lord." Mathen of Verden muttered.
Talion smiled and waved one hand forward. From the huddle of his blacksheilds came a barnacle encrusted chest Talion had pulled from the ocean floor. Then a second chest, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, an either and a final ninth were stacked atop each other next on either side of Talion. These were heavy chests, reinforced with iron, that took two Skelligans pulling with all their might to move.
Wordlessly, Talion placed a hand on the uppermost chest on his right side and gave a gentle nudge.
The chest cracked the flagstones it landed on and its impacting noise caused dusts to waff down from the tavern's rafters. Talion then opened the still locked chest. There was a ping as the rusted lock snapped off, and golden glow filled the air as the light from the hearth reflected off this sunken treasure. The chest was filled to the brim with plundered booty: gold coins, goblets, plates, necklaces, torcs and rings.
The other chests were opened. They too were filled with gold and silver and bronze with jewels interspersed here and there.
Talion spoke at last, as the astonished men finished taking in the emperor's ransom before them.
"I think that you shall find this more than covers your fees." He slid a chest over to Mathen's feet and did the same for Captain Oldo.
"Bloody fuck.." Mathen breathed out, a wild grin quickly overtaking his face. "Bloody fuck! That'll do just fine. Anyone you need killed, consider them as good as dead, or I'm not Mathen Sixshot!"
"Aye, the lad's got the right cut of his jib for this." Captain Oldo agreed. "Me ships and me cew are the best north of the Yaruga. We'll sail ye wherever ye be needing and get ye there in one pice for the right price, be that Kovir, the Heirarch's palace or Melitele's own panty drawer. "
"And for this?" Talion waved at the chest in from of the captain.
"Aye." A malevolent light entered the rugged captain's face. "For this, we'll sail you right into the heart of Black Ones' territory and anywhere else after that."
Hushed muttering broke out after that. This was the first mention of the common foe that had made Talion seek out these exiles and allow the mustering of his blackshields at Kaer Trolde. Talion savored the atmosphere that grew.
"All well and good, Wraith Lord." Sir Goidemar spoke up. "But we are all here because we hate the Black Ones. I agreed to come here because my respect for those who continue to fight them. We all have a common enemy, What I want to know is why we should follow you."
Sir Aldwold picked up the Temerian knight's thread. "Sir Goidemar has the right of it. I can say with confidence that none can doubt you are a man of …ability and a fearsome foe to your enemies, my lord Talion. But you ask much of us and show even less of yourself to make us put that trust into you. It is the middle of winter and you wish to sail across the sea and attack the Nilfgaardians! Not even a powerful mage such as yourself can conjure the food and supplies we'd need to just stay alive!"
"Their commanders are no fools either, Emyhr will have ordered them into well defended positions for the winter. I say it is more prudent to wait for spring before we begin to plan. Wait for word from our partisans along the Pontar or join up with the Cidarans." Sir Goidemar finished, crossing his arms.
Talion saw that the Temerians and the Aedirians agreed with their leaders words and he heard his blackshields express their own disagreement in return. He had not planned for this degree of cautiousness from these men whose own homes were under the iron boot of enemy occupation as they spoke. He would not have rested at all if such a thing had happened to Gondor and he had fought and fought and died then fought again to prevent that very evil from happening.
Unexpectedly it made him ache for the quality of men such as Baranor and tenacity of Idril and Lithariel. They would never council to wait until spring. How strange that he now thought of men and women so long dead.
"I did not take you to be a coward, Sir Goidemar. Nor you, Sir Aldwold." Talion said. "Do your hearts not burn with anger at the destruction of your homes, the rape of your wifes and daughters by the Nilfgaardians? Are you all not compelled to action by the burning of your fields, the enslavement of your countrymen?" He looked around again and to his suprise saw that they were. Fists were clenched and jaws gritted in anger. Now he saw the reason for their delay.
These exiles had no leader, not one they could all put their trust in. There was no plan for them other than to fight Nilfgaard yet they did not know how to accomplish that by themselves. They needed a leader and Talion would give them one.
"Nilfgaard will only grow stronger if you wait until spring and they will be on guard." Talion waved at the men behind him. "These men know that. You know that. I know that. So there is one course we can make: we attack."
"Even if we sail now, the winter storms will sink half of us before we even sight land!" Sir Aldwold objected.
Talion frowned. "Do not make the mistake of assuming my power ends at conjuring cheap tricks. The storms will be cast down with a wave of my hand. The waves they raise will be split before our bows. The wind will be commanded to fill our sails. And when we reach the walls that the Nilfgaardians hide behind, thinking themselves safe from all outside danger?"
Talion walked over to the hearth and swung his left hand into the stone.
Cra-thoom! Ice flew from his hand when it touched the stones and hearth blew outwards, exploding under the deadly cold Talion had lashed out with. Daylight filtered in through the hole where the hearth had once been and everyone except Talion shivered at the touch of winter's breath.
"Those walls will fall before me." Talion turned so that his back faced the daylight and spread his arms.
"Do you not want to win back your homes men of Temeria? Men of Aedirn?" He asked. "Or do you wish to sculk from tavern to tavern, alehouse to alehouse, talking of revenge? Do you want to go home?!"
"I will depart at week's end to take the fight to the Black Ones. If you seek to join me, take that gold and ready yourselves for war. But if the coward's life is your choice, then spend it on more ale and continue to dream of home."
~~~
Talion watched those men that night. Watched them talk in twos and threes, going from tavern to lodgehouse to brothel. If these were orcs, Talion would not need to wait for them to come to their own decisions to obey him. They might already be underway.
But these were not orcs, these were men he had to remind himself. To try a make their choice for them in such a way was the path of the Witch-King and Talion would never fall to that temptation.
So he watched men talk long into the night, and when the exiles and the rest of the had gone to sleep, Talion watched the night sky.
He thought of the new world he had found himself in. Of the new kingdoms and races of men that filled it. A new world where all manner of evil lurked. Monsters, foul spirits and evil sorcerers ran wild. Even the forces of the unseen world were twisted from what Talion had learned through stalking the local shamans. Magic was called a force of Chaos, considered to be foreign to an ordered world. Talion was galled at the chaos he saw in the unseen world, but that was a matter to be explored later.
Nilfgaard however, it must be destroyed. It was all to easy for Talion to see the actions of the Dark Lord in Nilfgaard's conquest. The total destruction of resisting lands. The wanton slaughter. The forced labor and slavery. A brutal lust for domination of the whole world playing out right now as Talion watched the night sky. He had seen it, pulling the memories from sleeping veterans and reading the books that described the earlier wars against Nilfgaard.
Only this iron fist was cloaked in the velvet of finery and eloquent words about how better life would be under the golden sun of Nilfgaard. Just a soon as all where made to kneel before it.
Talion believed that Sauron would be impressed with this Emhyr var Emreis.
It made him furious
The Free Peoples best defenders had fallen in the first wave of this latest Nilfgaardian onslaught, Talion had learned. The last of Temeria's king assassinated and long with a cohort of his allies from the earlier wars. According to the rumors, Redania now fought a desparate winter war along the Pontar river to halt Nilfgaard's northward advance.
Talion had not fought one doomed war only to arrive where another evil was advancing unopposed and do nothing. He would pick up his blade again and fight this evil. Nilfgaard would fall, he swore it to himself.
And a whisper in his mind told him that when he defeated Nilfgaard and ground it under his boot, he could be the one to restore order to this world.
So Talion would go to war once again. He would build himself another army and free the world from this evil. First he needed a victory and a site to plant his banner and draw followers to his side. Through studying the maps that King Bran had allowed him access to and the interrogation of merchants newly arrived from the continent, Talion had found the first place to strike.
He selected a city called Gors Velen. It was located on the Temerian coast and was close to the borders of Redania and Cidaris, two kingdoms that would guard Talion's flanks while he established his base of operations. The Pontar river to the north would prevent his position from being flanked. The temerian exiles he had approached were mostly from this region so he would have the benefit of local knowledge of the terrain.
Talion breathed deeply, enjoying the cold air in his lungs. It felt good to have a purpose again.
~~~
Two days later, he appeared in the hall of King Bran again and thanked the old king for his generous hospitality. The king and his advisors had enough composure to not be overly pleased that Talion was leaving their land. And Talion did not particularly care what the old king thought of him. Death hung over the man in Talion's other sight. King Bran would not see another winter.
But his son, on the other hand. That was a man Talion took interest in. There was a drive in Svanrige Tuirseach that reminded Talion of himself in a way.
So Talion gifted the young prince with a sword. Talion had forged it in the manner of the horse lords of Rohan as he had observed that the style used by the Skelligans had many similarities. It was one of his finer works. He had said to the hall of the king in a low voice that every man could still hear clearly that the sword would never dull, would never break and when born by its intended master would never slip from his hand.
King Bran had called it a kingly gift and Svanrige had accepted it with both solemnity and wariness. Talion believed the young man would always be cautious around him and judged that caution would serve him well as king.
Svanrige's wariness had faded away when he drew the sword from its plain scabbard and beheld the beauty of his new blade. Raising the blade high, Svanrige named it Gram to the raucous acclaim of the entire hall.
Then on the last day of the year, Talion's rather ramshackle fleet sailed out of Kaer Trolde. Captain Oldo's carracks were full of all the continental exiles of that town. It took longer than Talion would have liked but the Temerians and Aedirnians had joined his expedition in the end. The longships of Talion's blackshields followed behind the carracks, and the skelligers sang funeral dirges as they rowed away from dock. All knew they had little chance of seeing their native lands again.
From the masts of the ships flew a new pennant that Talion had ordered made: a silver skull and crescent moon surrounded by a ring of gold on black. His old colors as lord of Minas Morgul. It was a dreadful banner to see, promising only death to those who would face it on the battlefield.
All the Continent would soon learn to fear its appearance.
A/N: Kept you waiting it huh?
But I got back on the horse and we're finally off to the races. Velen here Talion comes and we have our first fortress for Talion to crack open, to borrow the game's terminology. Interestingly, the all female magical academy of Aretuza was off the coast from Gors Velen. One of Nilfgaards opening moves against the North was a strike against it. And because I liked writing Svanrige so much, he gets a cool sword from Talion. Surely this won't have any effect on the upcoming election when his father dies.
