Reavers.

The drug-addled, psychopathic maniacs that roamed the wilderness of Skyrim in small packs, armed to the teeth and too crazy to be afraid of the monsters that they shared their land with. Crimson-Eyes-Killer-Viper knew them all too well. Rejected by the civilized settlements -- or what passed for civilization anyway -- they made their home in abandoned forts and other ruins of the old world. Just like him, they scavenged for supplies, gear and valuables. Unlike him, they also raided farms, made the roads unsafe and killed innocents for sport. Viper narrowed his eyes at the sight of them and pulled his cloak a little tighter around himself. 

He was perched sixteen feet up in the branches of a huge pine tree, scoping out the watchtower in the valley below him. There were signs of recent settlement around the tower but the place looked to be abandoned now. Knowing that appearances could be deceiving, Viper had settled into the tree for the day. If nothing else, he was a patient elf when it came to his work. His experience paid off once again when the reavers showed up. There looked to be four of them. Viper was unsure whether they were the ones that lived in the watchtower and were coming back from their own mission, or whether they were currently still on one. As far as living arrangements went outside of the massive walls of Windhelm, they could do worse than the watchtower. Viper snowly nibbled away at a piece of dried meat while the reavers fanned out across the tundra that surrounded the watchtower. The way they overturned the tents and cooking pots that were scattered about told Viper all he needed to know. They were on the prowl, same as him. 

“Good,” Viper muttered to himself. “Unfamiliar with the lay of the land, distracted by their search. Easy.” 

Slow as slow, the Dunmer climbed down and out of the tree. Once on the ground, Viper kept low and crawled down the hill towards the tundra, using glacial boulders that had been deposited there since before the time of man as cover to stay out of sight. At the bottom of the hill Viper peeked out over the top of one of the boulders, his face hidden by the hood of his cloak. One of the reavers kept watch outside while the other three had entered the watchtower. Even from here, some hundred yards away, Viper could hear them hollering and whooping to each other. 

“High on something. Hist sap, maybe. Won’t feel pain. Shoot to kill.” 

With practiced ease, Viper’s fingers unfastened Heartseeker from its strap and gently laid the crossbow across the boulder. The Dunmer never took his eyes off the reaver. Now that he was a little closer he could see that he was a male Nord, and a strong specimen too. His torso was bare and he kept rolling his jaw while his head shot this way and that, looking around but not seeing anything. Viper closed one eye and rested his cheek on the crossbow’s stock. The other eye was aligned with the iron sights on the weapon. Viper slowed down his breathing and improved his aim with a few minor adjustments. He had one shot. 

With a loud [i]thwang[/i] and a sharp metallic sound, Heartseeker fired. Viper’s aim had been true. The Nord immediately keeled over as soon as he was struck, the bolt sticking out of his face, having pierced through his nasal cavity and into his brain stem. Viper inhaled deeply -- he’d held his breath for the shot -- and burst into action. He dashed out from behind the rock and towards the watchtower, his soft leather boots carrying him across the frozen ground almost silently. Inside, the remaining reavers were still loudly tearing through whatever they had found. They had not heard their companion’s death. As soon as he entered the watchtower’s shadow, Viper’s deft fingers unclasped one of the bear traps from the side of his backpack and he knelt some ten yards in front of the watchtower’s entrance. He prepared the trap and placed a Fire Rune right beneath it. Then he sprinted away at a ninety degree angle and took cover behind a piece of rubble that had been smashed loose from the top of the watchtower in some long-forgotten incident, some forty-five yards away. He had deliberately left the corpse of the reaver and the bolt stuck in his face outside. The angle at which he had fallen made it clear where Viper had shot him from. He was counting on the other reavers to realize that. If they stepped out of the watchtower now -- and hopefully one in the beartrap, hidden in a clump of grass -- and looked for him in that direction, they would leave their flanks exposed to crossbow fire from his new position. 

Seconds turned into minutes as the reavers continued to fail to realize that their watchman had been shot dead. Viper didn’t budge. There was nothing to be gained by moving. He had an advantageous position. Waiting was his best option. So there he remained, still as a statue, his breathing slow and even, barely even blinking. 

At long last, one of the reavers finally stepped outside after calling out what sounded like a name repeatedly and, predictably, receiving no response. Viper could hear the woman curse when she saw the corpse of her erstwhile companion and she ran over to him. 

“Rookie mistake,” Viper whispered. 

Her brief scream of pain as she stepped into and triggered the bear trap was cut short by the explosive pillar of fire that engulfed her. Normally the force of the Fire Rune’s detonation threw its victims clear of the blast zone. That’s why Viper used bear traps that he firmly anchored into the earth. Caught in the cast-iron teeth of the trap, the woman’s body had nowhere to go. She was immolated within seconds and continued to burn as the magical flames created by the Rune latched onto anything flammable -- fur, mostly -- and roared with supernatural hunger. She died slowly and in extreme pain. 

The two remaining reavers realized that they had been outmaneuvered and refused to step outside. That was annoying. Still, without anywhere else to go, Viper knew that the reavers would eventually hope that their invisible assailant had grown bored and left. Prey always did. He quickly glanced up to judge the position of the sun. Three more hours until nightfall. That was cutting it close, he reckoned, but he knew that he was practically invisible in the dusk, pressed up against the rubble, his cloak covering every visible inch of him. He had more time than they did. If something had heard the Fire Rune’s detonation or the woman’s screams, it would be drawn to the tower, not to him. 

He waited. 

As the sun slowly began to disappear behind the mountain ranges that fenced off the western side of the tundra plain, Viper became acutely aware of the shape of something moving towards the watchtower. It descended down the same hill he had first observed the reavers from. Viper’s eyes flitted between the newcomer’s presence and the watchtower. He tried to make his breathing even more silent and made himself even smaller, barely keeping his head high enough to peer out over the rubble. As he had done so many times, Viper wished he had been born as a Khajiit. It had quickly become too dark for him to make out the exact nature of the humanoid entity. In the wastelands of Skyrim, such a person or creature could be anything, or anyone. Whatever it was, it moved entirely silently and almost seemed to fade into its environment. Viper had to squint his eyes and concentrate to the fullest extent of his considerable mental acuity to keep track of its movements. 

It paused at the half-collapsed, charred corpse of the woman, as if it was inspecting her. Then it moved into the watchtower without hesitation. 

Their screams only lasted a few seconds. Viper clutched Heartseeker’s grip and trigger more tightly. Silence fell over the tundra and nothing continued to happen for several minutes. Above it all, the stars slowly twinkled into visibility, as eternal and uncaring as ever, while the last remnants of the sun’s light receded. Then, after what felt like an eternity, the shape emerged from the watchtower and left the way it came. Viper watched it leave and even after it disappeared from sight on the top of the hill, he waited for a few more minutes. 

“Gods above,” he muttered and exhaled slowly. 

A grisly sight greeted him inside the tower. The two reavers had been killed with what looked like a rapid succession of blade or spear thrusts. More importantly, however, was that they had been entirely exsanguinated. Fear and revulsion made Viper recoil involuntarily. Someone had once told him that the vampires of the old world only drank a little bit of blood and left their victims alive. They were a part of the continent-spanning society that had allegedly existed and preferred to hide in plain sight. If that was true, Viper thought to himself, vampirism had developed far more abominable forms and practices since the Calamity. Reluctant to stay more than a second longer than was strictly necessary, Viper was relieved to find that the reavers had put all their findings together in a single pile on top of a broken table. There were some old septims, two swords, fresh loaves of bread, salted meats and a selection of ores, probably mined from somewhere local. It looked to him like the watchtower had been inhabited by ordinary people of some kind until very recently. 

“Maybe the vampire got them all. Fuck.” 

After selecting the most valuable items among the reavers’ haul and stuffing them into his backpack, Viper snuck out of the watchtower and left the tundra as fast as he could, pausing only to collect his crossbow bolt from the Nord’s face. He would feel safer once he was under the cover of some trees again. That said, he made sure he did not go back the way he came. Sharing his trail with a vampire was absolutely out of the question. 

He would not breathe freely again until the gates of Windhelm closed behind him, two days later. 

“What’s the matter, Viper?” Fenrir asked as he looked up from his inspection of Viper’s backpack. Everything that went into and out of the city was carefully searched, and Wulfharth Backbreaker made sure that he got his cut. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

The Dunmer scowled at him. “No. It was a fucking vampire, alright? Are you done?” 

Fenrir exchanged glances with Adunya, his Bosmeri colleague for the evening’s watch. “Yeah, we’re done here. Go on in.”

With an annoyed grunt, Viper snatched his backpack out of Fenrir’s hands and was just about ready to stomp off when the guard held up his hand. 

“One more thing. Go visit Caeliana. Said she missed you and your stories. I’m sure she’ll wanna hear all about this vampire of yours,” Fenrir said, not unkindly. 

“Fuck off.” 

Fenrir sighed. Adunya covered her smile with her hand. “Just go and talk to her.” 

“Hmph.”