While they had managed to gain entry, the vampires and their minions were soon finding that the layout and design of Fort Dawnguard was unlike anything they had encountered before. The fort’s original creation as a prison for the city of Riften had ensured that halls and passages were arranged differently to most castles, ensuring that those that it had once contained would find themselves lost and doubling back during any escape attempts. Some would get lost, misdirected or into dead ends, but unfortunately for Gunmar, a handful managed to find their way to the gatehouse where he blundered right into them. The night had been growing late and he had been scrounging for food and scraps for his pets in the kitchen when he had heard noises from the main hall and gatehouse that curiosity forced him to investigate.
With a basket full of bones and half consumed food in his arms, he comically blundered right into the middle of a small group of vampires, a trio of which were cursing and grunting as they hauled back on the mechanisms holding the portcullis closed. There were half a dozen of the creatures, dressed in a motley collection of stolen Dawnguard equipment that had allowed them to infiltrate this deep into the fortress, and while Gunmar mightn’t have been the smartest of the Dawnguard’s leadership, he didn’t need more than a glance to realise they were in serious trouble.
The guards were down, laying motionless on the floor, and through the partially opened gates and the slowly rising portcullis he could see an enormous crowd pressing into the entryway. Dozens of thralls, numerous furless, black skinned, dog-like creatures, and more vampires than he wanted to count, all pushing forward eagerly as the portcullis was slowly raised. Without hesitation he had dumped the kitchen scraps on the floor, turning and fleeing while ripping an alarm bell off the wall and ringing it as loudly as he could.
As effective as it was in alerting the fortress to the threat they faced, it was just as effective at drawing the creature’s attention to him. Within seconds of the brass tolling echoing through the fortress that was returned by a chorus of orders being shouted, it was obvious that he was being chased. Gunmar may have been many things, but a runner was not one of them and he had been quickly caught by a pair of the blood sucking monsters and a small pack of their attendant thralls.
All he could do was curl up into a ball and weather the punches and kicks that rained down incessantly after he was tackled by a pair of emaciated thralls. He was larger both in size and body mass than all of them, but when the fight was eight against one, there was little he could really do. What was worse was the way that they were obviously not attacking the fortress with the intent on killing them all. The fact that the creatures held back and didn’t feed, did not bode well for anyone. They were seeking to destroy the Dawnguard, but they were not going to pass up the opportunity to increase the number of thralls they could feed upon.
A sandaled foot crashed into his face and he was left snorting and coughing from the wash of blood that streamed down over his mouth and chin. An eye went dark after one of the thralls grabbed him by the hair and punched him as hard as she could and he could feel the layers of bruises all across his body. The pain was incredible, and even worse than the time that he had gotten drunk and lost a bet with a khajiit caravan that involved their trained dancing bear.
“Enough. I might like my meat tenderised, but we don’t want him crippled.”
Unable to properly see with one eye already swollen shut, Gunmar could do little but look up at the grinning creature standing in front of him. It was undeniably a vampire, the twisted visage was unmistakable, but the thin, malnourished individuals surrounding it were all mortals. Men and women alike, they all had the same, stupefied expression that had always made him think of domesticated bovines. Each and every one of them were thin, with heavy scar tissue packed densely around their throats and wrists, and were dressed in a collection of rags and pieced-together armour. The vampires had never been content with arming or equipping their thralls, they were only here to act as labourers and meat shields against the Dawnguard but had proven more than enough to capture him.
“Lift him up.”
A pair of hands, bone thin and cold, gripped him under the armpits and they dragged him upright. The two thralls were smaller than him but after the beating the mob had just provided, Gunmar slumped in their grasp, appearing to the group as though all of the fight had left him as the beating took its toll on his body.
“You’ll do, I think.” Giving him a quick up-and-down with its burning eyes with disgust written into his features, Rargal sneered with a voice like poison. “I’m not one for the taste of Nord, but there will be others who will appreciate the morsel.”
A little more than a glance from the creature was all that was needed to command the two thralls holding him by the arms and for the briefest of seconds Gunmar made the show of being compliant. Then the second was gone, and he twisted around, slamming his head as hard as he could into a face before turning, pulling the other thrall close and slamming a knee into a groin with such force that the corrupted man was lifted several centimetres off the floor. Despite being bent to the will of a corrupted and damned monster there was little in the world that could allow a mortal to remain standing from such injuries, and they both folded over in agony.
“You useless scum! Get him!” Roared Rargal as Gunmar exploded into activity. His injuries were slowing him down but he was thankful that he didn’t have far to run. His personal room, the smithy and the animal pens were nearby and he made for them through the twisting, winding corridors as fast as his legs could carry him. From the sounds of things, the rest of the Dawnguard were in the middle of a battle for survival and would be unable to lend him any aid, but he had other friends to call upon.
The key hanging from its leather loop around his throat was snatched away in mid run, and ducking and weaving through the corridors and semi-abandoned rooms he managed to buy himself precious time from the mob of thralls surging after him. They were baying for his blood almost as much as their vampiric masters were, but he didn’t allow himself any time to consider the situation he was caught in. Purely running on adrenaline and forcing himself to ignore the bruising and swelling and their associated aches, he kicked open a door and leapt inside without hesitation.
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Unlike most within the fortress, the doors to his quarters were reinforced, and capable of being locked from either side and he took advantage of the fact as he dropped a plank bracing the entrance closed. There was no time, not even a moment for hesitation and knew that even such defences would give him seconds from the creatures hunting him and only if he was lucky. He needed help, the kind that only an animal trainer like himself had access to.
This portion of the fortress was less a castle interior and more of a natural cavern expanded to provide space for a smithy capable of providing arms and armour for hundreds of soldiers. He and the Dawnguard hadn’t required even a fraction of what the smithy could ultimately provide, but Gunmar was not going to let such a space go to waste and instead turned it into his animal pens. Over the past months they had managed to acquire over two dozen war and hunting dogs ranging from heavily muscled Colovian Mastiffs, to Nordic wolfhounds, and many more, and the sounds of fighting, and scents of blood on the air had excited every single one of them. Howls, and deep throated barks filled the cavern with enough noise that it made Gunmar’s ears ring, but he ignored them.
Most of the dogs were too new, untested, and untrained. All but a few still required weeks, if not months of training before they could be used for anything beyond the simplest of commands, let alone combat vampires. Gunmar however had something different in mind, rushing over to a heavy set, chained, bolted, and reinforced steel door set into the cavern’s wall. Only this door was afforded this level of security compared to the steel bars and fences of the dog pens and their agitated occupants, and Gunmar sighed in relief as his key clicked into place and the heavy, dwemer padlock snapped open.
A punch, like a kick of a mule, struck him full force in the side of his chest, throwing him hard several metres away as his attacker followed it up by grabbing and tossing him like he was a bag of flour. It drove all the air out of his lungs, leaving him panting and gasping for air even as he abstractly sensed, rather than felt the way that something snapped within his chest as the floor rushed up to meet him. He was used to pain, had the scars and injuries to show decades of capturing, taming, training and even fighting all of Skyrim’s denizens, but this was a different pain, one that made it difficult to breathe, let alone think and realise how another vampire was looming over him.
“Very clever meat. You almost got away.” It growled at him, sliding with an unnatural grace over to him as he groaned in agony and tried to roll over. “Oh, please don’t rise on my behalf. Take a… seat!”
A leather boot pushed him back down, the heel grinding into his sternum and he tried to push it weakly away. The leg within the boot and tunic was harder than ebony and impossible to dislodge, but he tried anyway, straining against both the way that he was now pinned under the creature, and his attempts to drag in great gulps of air through the pain.
He had been too slow, and the thudding noises from the door were merely the announcement of more than just the lone vampire that had been lurking in ambush. Thick enough to hold off several soldiers, the door had been reduced to little more than matchwood by a being cursed by Molag Bal. One second it stood resolute and seemingly impervious, the next it cracked and splintered as Rargal kicked it in, allowing him and the damned mortals following him to pour inside.
“Are these your pets?” Grinning triumphantly, the chorus of laughter was loud enough to be heard over the increased barking and growling from the dozens of wardogs trapped helplessly in their pens. “Then it is going to be fitting making you watch them die.”
Spears, daggers, swords and axes were drawn by the thralls as the two vampires ordered their minions to move towards the pens. They were obviously not expecting Gunmar’s reaction of laughter as he looked at them all, and at the door that he had almost succeeded in opening. It was slightly ajar, its binding chains strong enough to contain nordic draughthorses hanging loosely from where they had once kept it secured.
“What’s so funny, meat?”
“Stendarr’s wrath is about to fall upon you.” Gunmar spat at the vampire standing on his chest, his words being delivered with a mouthful of blood that splattered the leather boot pinning him to the floor.
“We don’t fear your impotent god any more than we fear you, meat.”
At their backs, the chains began to fall away in a chiming chorus, the door shuddering as the creature within nudged it curiously. It was rare for its pen to be opened outside of practice or food, and between the strange noises and unfamiliar smells from outside, its curiosity overcame its training, and it pushed experimentally on the now, unsecured door. The movement however didn’t go unnoticed, and one of the thralls moved closer, a dagger held in a thin, anaemic hand with a confident, triumphant grin on their face as they pulled the doors open to deal with the animal inside.
Such confidence lasted the time it took for the doors to creak open, and the corrupted mortal’s expression turned into an expression of pure horror as they craned their head back and stared at a fully grown frost troll. Despite being hunched over on all fours like a monstrous ape, it was still three metres tall and weighing over a tonne of pure muscle, looming over them all as it carefully lumbered out of its pen with a strange gentleness that belied its incredible size.
Muscles strong enough to wrestle mammoths writhed under shaggy, furred flesh, and deep within the shadows of its eyesockets, a triad of eyes squinted in the light and at the sight of so many beings in front of it. It was searching, curious, but not concerned, moving carefully as though not to disturb the smaller creatures backing away from it in terror. There wasn’t a single being, alive or undead who couldn’t recognise a troll when they saw one, and realisation of the true danger began to bloom as it suddenly stopped, sniffing the air and locking its trio of eyes on the man under the vampire’s boot. The man who had hand raised it from a tiny trolling, into the enormous beast it had become.
Trolls were the true terrors of Skyrim’s wilds, creatures so deadly that when disturbed it took hunting parties to dispatch lone individuals, and entire warbands to clear nests, but this was no ordinary troll. Metal plates, leather and chainmail had been attached to almost every centimetre of its body, in most places literally nailed and bolted into its skin and bones. In a lot of ways, the troll was practically a walking scrapyard, clad in everything from salvaged plate armour, horses barding, and even in a few places, priceless dwemer artefacts from broken Animunculi acquired during Sorine’s travels. Over many, many years, Gunmar had taken advantage of his pet’s incredible, natural regeneration and lack of pain to create an armoured behemoth capable of fighting a dragon with reasonable chances of success. The armour alone weighed more than four fully grown men, and as finishing touches, he had enhanced its already deadly nature with a pair of enormous blades fashioned from horse plows on the back of each wrist.
“Stendarr.” Calling out loud enough to draw his pet’s attention, Gunmar grinned wickedly and stared at the horrified realisation of the vampire standing on him, as he gave his pet a single word of command.
“Kill.”
