Watchers

     The six watchers lay motionless on their stomachs on the sandy ridge,
their sand-caked armor making them invisible to the white plain below. On
the plain and upwind from them was a most unusual sight. The watcher with
the keenest eyes had picked out a man staked to the desert floor, quite
dead. Two armed figures stood over him, debating something. Their words
carried badly on the thin air. One thing was certain: these people were not
supposed to be here.
     A watcher touched the arm of their leader.
     "There. Just as I said."
     Another figure was making its way over the tortured earth. It had just
veered toward the figures standing over the corpse. This third figure was
indeed the first thing the watchers had seen.
     The leader nodded slightly. Though no one save one of the watchers
could read him, he was terrified. No one should be here; not one living
thing.
     They watched.
     The third figure arrived at the corpse and seemed to speak with the two
figures. Women. He did not know where this intuition came from, but the
leader knew the first two figures to be women. He could not see them clearly
from this distance. They were little more than smudges. Something in their
stance perhaps?
     The same watcher touched his arm again.
     "What do you think?"
     At that moment, there was a sound like thunder growling, but softer.
A flash of light, then a new group of figures appeared not far from the
first. All were mounted. Also, far off to the side; a second flash, and a
lone figure stumbled across the sand and bone.
     "Well?"
     The remaining watchers were uncomfortable, for they knew the youngest
of their number had just overstepped his bounds. The leader did not spare
him a glance, but kept his black gaze on the ever-increasing party gathering
around the body.
     "What is there to think?" asked the leader. "These people should not be
here. They cannot be here, and yet they are. And there is yet the matter of
the dead. Lord Th'Sollar walks again."
     At the mention of the great man's name, all heads were bowed save one.
She continued to watch the interactions of those below. All did not seem
well there. The moment of respect passed.
     They watched.

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Alduin dor Lammoth