Lorag finished off the rest of his ale and tossed the bottle aside. He was becoming steadily less reluctant to speak about the current topic the longer the conversation went on, and the more he drank. "It was sometimes hard to see how the pieces of his plans fit together, just being a soldier like I was. I was more focused on bashin' in the traitors' skulls than seeing what my commander's grand plan was, but...there were a few times that I saw enough. I guess one of 'em would be after that dragon attack. We were on the way to Fort Kastav, in the Pale. It had been a point of contention between us and the Stormcloaks; we'd gone back and forth on the place a few times, and built up the defenses more every time it changed hands. I don't think the Pale itself was all that valuable; it was a mountainous, frozen wasteland, mostly. But, Dawnstar had a port the Empire could use to bring in more supplies, and that fort was a decent staging ground to mount attacks on Winterhold and Eastmarch."

With a brief pause, Lorag started to eye the bottle of ale Gallus was holding. "Anyway, we were meant to lay siege to the place, but that dragon had cut us down too much for that. Do'rhajul, though, he didn't back down. He came up with a plan, and didn't tell most of us what it was until it was already happening. In the dead of night, he had a portion of our troops get down in the snow, cover ourselves in it, and start crawling towards the fort. It was dark, and he had us stop just behind a small hill as close as we could get without bein' seen. I was one of 'em. He had the alchemists make us some kind of potion to help with the cold, but that was still the coldest I think I've ever been. Knowing how many supplies we lost to that dragon, it might've just been flavored water, to trick us into thinkin' we were warm. Still, it was better than Do'rhajul's job. See, Fort Kastav was a prison for war captives, since trying to escape into that frozen wasteland was practically a death sentence. So, we dressed up some of our Nords in some Stormcloak uniforms we'd taken from enemy patrols, then had them escort some more of our soldiers as "prisoners" straight up to their fort. Do'rhajul made himself one of the prisoners. It was too dark for them to read the orders we forged from the top of the walls, and they thought the group was too small to be a threat if it turned out to be a trick, but...they were wrong. As soon as they were inside, they overpowered the gate guard to keep the gate open. Now, I couldn't see from where I was, but I heard the stories about the fight. Unarmored, and with a sword undersized for his body, our commander put himself at the front of the defense to hold the gate, with every Stormcloak in sight bearing down on them. We charged as soon as we saw the signal. Stood up out of the snow, ran straight through a volley of arrows, and stormed in straight through the open gate to reinforce them. By the time I got there, Do'rhajul had taken an enemy shield and claymore, and kept leading the attack from the front, all while in prisoner rags."

---

Ma'tanza nodded briefly. "Oh, Ma'tanza just found a bigger cord to hang it around her neck. Well, it's more of a rope; this one just took the cord you had and tied it to a rope around her neck. That seems to work fine."

Seeing Tzirret's rather exhausted demeanor produced a yawn from Ma'tanza. She was not as fatigued as him, but she did feel like laying down to relax. She pulled away from Tzirret briefly to reach into her tent and drag her bedroll outside, just in front of the tent. Sitting down on the bedroll, she reached back and started to unwrap her torso. "You do look really tired. This one hopes you don't have to work this much every day of the march. Ma'tanza doesn't see how anyone could do that."