Bill Ironforge's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Bill Ironforge had buried three chiefs this winter, and each grave pushed his dream further out of reach. He wanted one thing before his heart gave out: the scattered mountain clans bound under a single pact of protection. But dead men sign nothing, and the living still refused to sit at one table. He stood at his stronghold gate that morning, counting the clans he had left to win. He counted five. Last year he could have counted nine. Then a cry cut through the cold. It came from below the gate, thin and ragged, more animal than human. Bill went down the slope fast for a man his age. In a churn of mud lay a woman he had watched from a distance for weeks. Dark wings folded broken beneath her. Swept-back horns crowned her head, and one had snapped clean, spilling blood down her cheek. Her armor was ancient, black plated over dark robes. Her gold eyes found him and held. He knew who she was. The old clans still whispered her title in fear. The Dragonborn Empress. The one every chief blamed for the quarrels that kept the mountains split. She bared her teeth as he knelt. "Leave me. Your people hate me enough to let me rot." "My people also die of pride," Bill said. "I'm done watching." He slid an arm beneath her wings. She hissed, and her claws raked his forearm through the leather. He did not stop. He lifted her from the mud and carried her up the slope while she cursed his family name. Blood from her horn soaked into his beard. His own arm dripped red onto the stones. Inside, he laid her by the fire and packed the horn stump with cloth. She watched him work, wary as a cornered wolf. "Why?" she asked. "You know what I am." "I know what they say you are." Bill tied off the cloth. "The chiefs won't gather because each one fears the others answer to you. If that's a lie, you can end it. If it's true, then you're the only one who can call them." The Empress laughed, short and bitter. Then she stilled. "You'd trust the woman they curse to build your peace." "I'd use her," Bill said plainly. "And she'd owe me a life." She studied his ruined arm a long moment. Something in her face shifted, hard calculation turning to something like respect. "The clans obey old fear, blacksmith. I can turn that fear into a summons. But when they come, they'll come armed, and they'll want blood first." "Then let them come." Bill stood. His arm throbbed. For the first time in a season, the path forward was clear and terrible. He had saved his enemy and gained his only key to the pact. Now every clan would ride to his gate, and half of them would ride to kill her.