Several hundred meters to the east.
A couple of minutes later.
Ysgramor, Chosen of the Storm.
The giant tribe was large.
A worthy opponent for fifty Companions and their king.
“Ha-ha-ha!
Magnificent!
I knew it — you’d also turn up in our new home!” exclaimed one of the warriors, pulling his axe from the nose of a giant that had fallen dead with a satisfied grin.
Meanwhile, Ysgramor’s own battle-axe met the giant’s club with incredible force, shattering it into its crude parts, and carried on, shearing off part of the giant’s fingers.
Which were also trophies from giants, at that.
“Wra-a-agh!” the king’s opponent roared in shock from the sharp pain, trying to backhand him with his other palm.
For which he paid with that very palm, severed by a wind-swift swing of the axe that had already taken dozens of cursed elven lives.
Involuntarily, he recalled his own words when he had given a speech before the Council of Captains: The restored hall, where he had once learned of the elves’ treacherous night attack, called the Night of Tears among the warriors.
Then, still riding high on victory and with hatred in his mind, he had proclaimed: “Go forth,” he roared, brandishing his axe.
“Go into the very heart of this new land.
Drive the contemptible elves from their palaces, where they indulge in idleness.
Trample them into the mud, condemn them to hard labor, and let them know that their deceit has become their unforgivable sin against our kind.
Know no mercy.
Show no kindness.
For they know and will show neither!” And he was met with a thunderous roar from the warriors, terrifying the still-living prisoners from among the accursed elven race.
From then on, the crew of each ship, or several at once, began preparing to depart for their chosen direction.
They didn’t sever all ties with each other — after all, at the feast of Per, they had sworn to be brothers in arms to one another until death.
At that moment, the last echoes of the civil war on the freezing south of Atmora finally faded into oblivion.
Finishing the giant with a powerful axe blow to its belly, nearly splitting the savage ogre in half, Ysgramor planted his right foot on it and surveyed the battlefield.
A battle that was already ending.
The wounded giants were being finished off, as they were useless even as slaves due to their gluttony.
The elves were better in that regard, so Ysgramor planned to capture them next time, rather than slaughter them outright.
They would pay for the sin of deceiving their people with labor unto death.
“My king!” Yik the River ran up to him, one of the ship captains and the king’s closest friend.
“In the giants’ lair, we found elven jewels!
Made of gold!” he exclaimed, holding up some richly decorated necklace.
“Did Ahzidal check them for the cursed Snow Elves’ sorcery?
I don’t want my most loyal friends to fall ill afterward,” Ysgramor frowned, leaning on his axe.
“You wanted to build your own city, a home for your wife and children…” “Oh yes, my king!
I will build it, no doubt!
Our Ahzidal says these things, on the contrary, gave elven sorcerers protection from the magic of their kin!
A wonderful thing!” exclaimed the River, who had received that nickname from Ysgramor himself before his first arrival in Skyrim.
“Wonderful.
Then divide the trophies among yourselves.
I am protected by the Storm itself, the Wind itself guards my flesh,” Ysgramor stated the fact, once again reminding his men of it.
Being the Chosen of Kin herself, of the Hawk herself, he was quite proud of this fact, for it meant divine approval of his deeds.
His vengeance.
Therefore, the King of Atmora possessed another skill — he knew how to listen to the Winds, which warned their chosen one of danger.
And at that moment, the Winds began to whisper in his ear that an all-consuming light was coming toward them.
Not one that granted warmth and survival in a sea of frost and cold, but one that annihilated, burning everything in its path.
And that his duty was to extinguish that fire, to sweep it away with a mighty Storm.
For the first time, for the first time the winds whispered not calmly and wisely, but with echoes of the same vengefulness that rang in Ysgramor’s own words when he spoke of the cursed elves.
Gripping Wuuthrad more comfortably, he turned toward the forest, from which, a few minutes later, in the light of the sunset, they began to emerge.
Elves.
Liars.
Cursed creatures.
And he led them — the one whom even the wise Storm did not love.
He was strikingly different from the long-eared ones striding proudly behind him, their ears as long as that certain Book of Grudges of the Dwemer, which their Ahzidal had spoken of.
Instead of armor, the elf wore an expensive white shirt, adorned with pointed symbols of the Sun, and his legs were clad in high boots, unusual for the Atmorans, without any fur.
It was clear that, like the other Snow Elves, he had no fear of cold or frost.
“Well, well, well.
What an interesting company we’ve come across, wouldn’t you say, Vaysi?” he suddenly spoke in the Atmoran tongue, addressing the elf woman walking beside him.
She was beautiful with her proud face of a young maiden, but Ysgramor was not deceived by it.
The exact same kind had cut down his people on the Night of Tears.
She replied something in her own language, which the avengers who had returned from Atmora had not yet learned.
But they would learn — after all, they would have to wring out of the cursed elves where their proud cities were!
“No need to be so serious,” the elf sighed almost humanly, immediately picking out Ysgramor with his gaze.
Ysgramor could see that despite the outward carelessness, frivolity, and cheerfulness, the leader of the cursed deceivers was an experienced warrior.
It showed in every movement, every gesture, even in his squinting gaze hidden behind his eyelids.
“Prepare for battle, my Companions!” Ysgramor cried out, gripping his axe more comfortably.
Briefly noting that Bjorn Bear’s Roar, sent in the same direction, was surely already dead, since he hadn’t warned his king of the approach of their worst enemies, Ysgramor fixed his gaze on the hated elf.
It was of him the Winds had whispered.
It was him the Hawk hated.
“Well, well…” he said, slightly surprised, tilting his head like a bird.
“How interesting…
A Chosen of the Aedra!
And with a sacred weapon…
Yes, now I understand how you managed to slaughter everyone in Saarthal.
Well, I suppose I need to beat you down first so you’ll listen to me, leader of the hu…” “Die, mer!” exclaimed Ahzidal, cutting off the talkative long-ear, and sent a wave of flame at him.
However, Ysgramor fully and completely agreed with their sorcerer, despite all his abruptness.
They would reach Sovngarde.
And the elves…
the elves would simply die.
…However, even now, the wielder of Wuuthrad and the Chosen of Kin could see that this battle would not be easy.
For Ahzidal’s flame was met by an equally hot and bright flame, in which golden sparks began to appear.
Future historians would never know that there were not thousands of elves and ancestors of the Nords here, but only a hundred.
But one way or another, the battle that would be remembered millennia later as the Battle of Light and Storm had begun.