Chapter 3:
I eventually got that fire going without reducing everything to ash, but I suspected that if there were many living animals in miles, most had long fled the thunderstorm-without-rain that was my attempts.
I treated the hide as best I could using white ash from the fire, rubbing it into the fleshy part, and burned the fur shorter. I didn't need a perfect thing. I just needed something that worked and wasn't likely to give me fleas.
The skin of my feet wasn't doing well, but that was to be expected for running barefoot on stone for most of a day. As I was comparing my feet with sections of the deer fur, to make sandals, I realized that beneath the layer of torn skin and calluses, a familiar set of tiny ridges could be felt. The same as the scales from my hip wound.
I resolved to focus instead on what I could immediately do, and made the necessary cuts from the deer to have at least basic protection for the bottoms of my feet. With only the dragonbone to do the work, it wasn't necessarily easy, but there was plenty of sinew besides on the deer's body. Twisting and twining it after I cut loose muscle I wanted to eat, I made sandals with enough sinew slack that I could tie them off around the top of my foot and up my shin.
I didn't need maximum coverage on my feet. I just needed the deer twice folded for cushion beneath them. It wasn't cold at night, and the days were blisteringly hot.
My next day of travel accounted for, I turned my attention to food.
I wasn't a cook, and there had always been a meal ready somewhere for the Dragonborn or someone to make it in my stead.
Naturally, that meant I burned the ever-changing-Oblivion out of the damned thing. Despite that, I found it hearty, and I had enough that it wasn't really a concern.
Eventually, I slept fitfully on a belly full of burned strange-deer.
In the middle of the night when the fire was only coals, I woke to the sound of gravel shifting.
Despite the lack of light, in the gloom I could still see surprisingly well. My vision might have been rendered only in shadows, but I could see the form of a small dog-like creature dragging off the head of the carcass I'd thrown far from the camp. I decided it wasn't really a concern and fell back asleep, with the vague comfort that there were scavengers of at least vaguely normal size in Not-Nirn.
I slept the rest of the night undisturbed.
The following morning, after I had my second fill of the meat I'd cooked, I opted to leave the remains for the creature to scavenge as well. I took up what remained of the fire-treated pelt and minding the edges, wrapped it around my waist. A few simple holes punched in the edges and sinew used to tie it off and I had the most makeshift of lower body clothing.
I took to the road again looking significantly more like a Forsworn than I would normally be comfortable with, but that was just the way things went.
My second day was spent mostly running. My surroundings changed in minor ways, and I found no source of water in the entirety of my travels. The terrain was very rocky, but falling away as I left what I was beginning to think was almost, but not quite a valley.
As all I had done was run so far along an endless wasteland, I noticed the gradual, slight left of the road over distance. That, or the angle of the land was fooling me and the road was just too straight so it seemed the culprit.
By dusk, I sought shelter to turn my attention to my voice.
I wasn't sure if I'd really managed to get my fire more under control, but it at least seemed predictable in the sense that it was always fire and nothing else. I got in the habit of stretching my animal skin out using rocks and sleeping as much as I could on it instead of the dirt for comfort.
The pelt was shrinking slightly.
In the late evening hours half-awake and with my gaze on the stars, I listened to new sounds, and more wildlife I didn't recognize.
A sense of wonder stoked within me, but with it the familiar feeling of solitude.
I thought much about the shouts I'd used and what they had done, and I checked my wound as it closed up. It was obviously healing well, but if I curled my fingertips in it just right, I could feel the ridges of the scales that had grown in place of skin there. They were almost seamless in the gap they filled. Maybe had I not been paying so much attention, it wouldn't have drawn my wariness the same.
The redness from the sun's treatment of my shoulders grew worse for my traveling, but in deciding between it and my manhood, I knew it was no decision at all.
The pelt stays where it is.
I suspect the only reason I wasn't more reddened despite my paleness was the undoubtedly trace amounts of Nedic blood I carried. Probably elven too. The so-called "Imperials" were just a mix of the Atmoran blood that made the Nords primarily mingling with the Nedes in bygone eras. The Bretons, just the equivalent of the Imperial mix with some elven blood. Everything was very wishy-washy and stereotypes where all of that was concerned.
As common a misunderstanding as the meaning of early Nord war-wives was the idea of what it meant to be a "Nord" in the modern era. It wasn't like people generally asked to know the last five generations of your family or something, unless there was a necessity of documentation. We weren't the Bretons.
It didn't diminish your ability to rise within a hold. Being a Nord was mostly cultural. The jarls held their land and passed it through blood, each with their own established families but honor and glory were an intrinsic part of our lifestyle. It would be perceived poorly for a well-achieved man to not be recognized by a jarl. A person who fought long enough, hard enough, and in the right opportunity might see themselves jarl.
Of course in times of war, anything could drive a wedge among even the same peoples.
To say not much of the elves of course.
The Dunmer were a classic and easy enemy for a lot of reasons, and not half of them any more undeserved than our reputation as elf haters, but the Aldmeri Dominion got its own special loathing aside in more recent years.
You'd be hard pressed to find a Nord that didn't feel a little way regarding Talos.
Of course, none of that stopped people from being people. Put them together long enough, and they would fight, have sex, or make friends. In varying combinations. The mass exodus of Dunmer into Skyrim would eventually lead that direction despite how things were in Windhelm.
Irileth was a perfect example of that.
I was almost certain her relationship with Balgruuf was much to the tone of a woman minding a Nord man's affairs. She put the "wife" in war-wife for sure.
In that way, I was no different than most of the Nords of my homeland. You'd be hard pressed to find a son of Skyrim that didn't have something a little extra in the blood.
That was to say…
Skyrim definitely belonged to the Nords, but we liked to spread it around a little.
I saw and caught my first familiar animal on the third day. It looked a little scraggly, with less thick fur, more bloodshot eyes, and elongated claws than I was expecting for a hare, but I had it over a fire the same as any other that night. Its small hide was relegated to a shawl to keep the sun from my shoulders the following morning.
Small mercies.
By the fourth, I was convinced the road was magical. I had run on it for long enough, completely uninterrupted to be steadfast in my belief. It was the only working explanation I had for why it could be maintained despite being hundreds of miles from the nearest group of people.
I found my first signs of recent passage that morning, a broken down wagon of some kind, laid flat in the dirt with half its boards missing, and not a wheel in sight. The wood was long sun-bleached, and not a bit of cloth clung to it. There were no signs of recent attendance, but all the same I had the tiny glimmer of hope in my gut.
As I was jogging through the later part of that afternoon, I saw shapes moving ahead on the road. Vertical.
People.
I finally found people. They seemed to be gathered on the edge of a ruin that the road passed along. Spreading out to one side in the distance, was an expanse of red that I didn't know first what to interpret as. Then I realized it was water, and worse that it had a peculiar smell that carried on the wind. It made me want to gag.
In spite of that, the rush of elation that hit me was like a second wind.
Slowing down and puffing out my breath, I noticed that given the way they all stood still on the horizon, that they had likely seen me too. Alone and armed only with a couple spikes of curved black-brown bone, I did the best I could to make my way slowly up the road toward them. I tucked the pair of potential weapons under my right arm, in the best showing I could give of good faith.
I'd had days to think about how I would try to approach speaking with people if I found them, but somewhere in my head it had started to feel like I might never somehow. When the moment finally came, I almost blanked.
They moved toward me, to meet me.
I saw something familiar in them.
They were all men in manner and appearance, I was fairly sure. Poorly bathed, with most adorned in a combination of leather and some cloth that was better suited for the sands I was in. It didn't appear well-maintained. The largest of them walked the front of the group, a hand tight on a one handed sword. The majority wore cloth wraps, veiling features from the sun but for the face in the case of a few, and only showing the eyes at all in the archer and one wielding an axe. I noted in a quiet corner of my mind that a lot of the cloth had old stains, turned varying degrees of a familiar brown that didn't always easily wash out.
The thinnest of the six, the archer, approaching me had an arrow nocked. He drew it back warily when their obvious leader was only ten paces from me and pointed it at me. I lifted my hands, fingers gently spread to make a taciturn attempt at showing I would not be armed against them.
There's no need for that.
The largest man at the front grunted something in a language I didn't understand. His head cloth was pulled down, to let me see his face. His features were a bit pudgy with brown eyes, a thick black beard, and well-tanned skin, but that same layer of fat just obscured an undeniable amount of muscle elsewhere. He was big, which I couldn't have assumed was easy in an environment so unpleasant. Of the group, he wore the most armor by far, with a dented and scratched breastplate of dull metal that covered his chest and studded leather most other places. Around his neck and shoulders sat a wrap of stained white cloth like the ones used by the others to cover their faces and hide them from the sun.
I opened my mouth, on the verge of saying something to let him know we didn't speak the same language, but remembered just in time that it would just boom across the hills and potentially startle them. The bowman looked twitchy, and might loose the arrow.
Their build was much lighter compared to their companions, aside from the typical thick wrists and strong shoulders that marked an archer. I noted they had no more than a handful of arrows in the quiver on their hip and the fletching wasn't cut to the precision of some arrows I was used to seeing.
If they were just concerned or cautious, and I spoke, I might instigate an attack.
Instead, I used my left hand to carefully motion to my mouth, opening it slightly, and shook my head. It was better to play mute, to strangers armed and so obviously cautious about me.
The large man's head tilted faintly, and he looked me over a second longer. Thankfully, the bowman didn't release their arrow. The obvious leader's eyes went to the dragon bone spikes beneath my right arm, still a little bloodied from my work with the deer. I hadn't exactly had much more than dirt to rub them down.
He said something again, lifting his voice.
I was no closer to understanding him really so I just stood there, unsure what to do.
One of the two men that were standing beside the frontman, a fellow with dark, leathery skin and brown eyes spoke. He was one of the ones that had almost all of his face covered, and carried a crude axe in his left hand, the spike on its back looking repurposed from something else. He motioned a little aside with it, looking at his leader. The words were clearly meant between them.
They all looked a little raggedy, really. The other man beside the leader had a similar skin color to the one at the front, and was carrying a spear that had seen better days. My eyes traced the scars that marked the wood of the shaft.
Excessive use, and it hasn't been replaced.
The iron of its head was pockmarked and slightly rusted, too.
Behind the front three, another two were carrying melee weapons. They were spears that had seen better days as well. The men carrying them were smaller individuals, but the one on the left had wrinkled eyes, so I suspected it wasn't youth and more just a thing of blood or means.
Probably the least trained, and less able.
Spears were effective, and usually handed first to the people who didn't know the faintest of combat, because it was the simplest form to learn. Poking something with a sharp stick was an old art. Maybe the second oldest. Even a weak old farmer with a sharp enough pokey stick could potentially wound or kill a warrior that didn't give them the right due. An experienced killer with them was worse.
Provided armor or magic wasn't in the question.
We Nords in general liked large weapons given our inclinations toward strength. Greataxes, great hammers, and greatswords were not uncommon because in many ways we were a traditional people.
And great.
There was also a relation there, between their prominence and who our recurring ancient enemies were.
The elves. They were always talented in magic. A little hole, while certainly effective and extremely deadly if in the right place, was easier to heal than a massive blow that chopped you shoulder to hip or shattered all of your ribs. Not to mention the reach.
Poke an elf, and if they get even a few moments to breathe, most of them will have that wound closed up. Hew them like a tree, and if they somehow survive, they won't want to fight anymore either way.
That was the way of Ysgramor.
Also, a big sword makes the heart happy.
Simple.
Not all things needed to be complicated. Sometimes simple was best.
A few words passed among the group of men in front of me, back and forth, and then finally the big one looked at me again, and grunted something. He pointed at my right arm, and the ground. As he repeated the gesture a second time, I realized what he wanted.
I lifted my arm, and let the dragonbone spikes fall to the ground with a little clatter.
The large one smiled slightly, showing a gap of a tooth missing and said something to the one on his left, with the darker skin and axe, nodding. Then he glanced back over his shoulder toward the archer, and said something else.
The leader stepped toward me. He lifted the sword he'd held low the entire time.
The archer released their arrow.
As I suspected.
I anticipated the release, shirking my left shoulder down and dipping my body forward, letting the arrow slip me just above my shoulder and back. I went low and forward, because I had learned long ago that stepping forward into ambush and combat tended to rattle the less trained and it brought me near the dead men walking.
My blood sang.
The leader's sword came down at an angle, edge alignment and stroke well-practiced. My right hand swept the stone of the road and curled around the longer dragonbone in the motion of my dodging the arrow, and I lifted it in a momentary reverse grip to deflect his blade as I stepped into his space, straightening. My weapon was shorter than his.
I flicked the wicked curve of black-brown dragonbone around in a forward grip as I brought it to bear, my left coming in to reinforce it.
I drove it into his breastplate. There was a violent thunk and a groan of metal, as his forward momentum came to a sudden halt on me forcing the spike in.
The breastplate was old, scarred, and battered with poor treatment. Any man with the right manner of weapon and strength could have potentially undone it provided their weapon did not deflect.
I was not just any man.
I drove the dragonbone through him, and felt the crunch as it passed into his spine but lacked the force to escape the metal at the back. He gasped, legs twitching and partially slack as I held him on his feet.
Then I just shoved him, releasing my hold on the weapon.
He toppled, the spike still lodged, and landed in a clanking heap, splayed out on his back. Blood began to pool beneath him, dripping from the side of his armor. His sword had fallen from his hand on the road at my side.
I let the breath of silence and threat settle.
I'd suspected, but I needed to be sure of course.
Bandits and their like probably existed in all lands, and many a sellsword took to banditry in spare time without enough witnesses. The group looked rough, with poorly cared for weaponry and goods, but that alone wasn't enough to deserve them being laid low. They just as well might have been scavenging whatever they could to survive, and rightfully cautious of a man adorned in only the raw make of wild animals.
Trying to kill a disarmed man for his meager belongings could be received only one way, though.
Maybe it was the dragon bones.
Didn't change anything in the end.
The bowman was pulling out another arrow, eyes widened. They were all I could see of his expression. The rest stood in the moment of shock.
I reached down and picked up the battered old longsword and rolled my shoulders. The sound its edge made as it dragged along the stone was loud, with only the backdrop of the wind.
They only hesitated a moment more, before one of them saying something seemed to spur on the rest. The nearest two charged me together but one of them tried to go toward my right side more.
I moved to meet them as the archer drew his arrow back.
A lunge of a spear reached me first, approaching me directly, and I hacked it aside as I stepped with my left foot forward. The man with the axe then came from my right, with a ululating cry, weapon held high.
I took a large right step at an angle toward him that he wasn't expecting, and extended out the sword to my maximum reach. The blade was laid flat in the air, and it struck him in his cloth covered throat, cutting the cry short even before I connected with his spine. The archer adjusted to track me for the motion and held his breath. So I flowed back left, sweeping the blade from the side of the axeman's throat to get it clear, and immediately pulled the spearman in front of me by his stained shirt.
The archer was already releasing by the time I acted, so the arrow stuck in him with a thud. He was still shouting in pain when I swept his legs and sent his hide-covered feet to point the way to sky.
I stomped his cry out with a crunch beneath doe skin, and ignored the blood in between my toes.
The old and young man -- I was fairly sure that was what they each were, tried to fan out even wider at something the former said. I threw myself upon him before he could give much more advice, trying to land the first blow, and the last.
He was smart enough to at least not make it as easy as the others.
The wisdom of age.
He fled back, gripping the spear tight with both hands and jabbing it repeatedly at me to try to keep me at bay, but even if I were restricting myself in the vaguest terms to martial might alone, I wasn't worried.
Within seconds, the younger of the two who'd gone more behind me thought he saw his opportunity in my distraction, and overextended as the old man stepped back again under my feint.
A mistake.
I wasn't a decade older than him, but my time was spent differently. I'd spent it bringing to heel everything from vampires to the World Eater himself. I wasn't a man when I first took up the sword. My balls were barely dropped when I took from my brother Mirmulnir and was summoned to High Hrothgar.
I changed my opponent and lunged the other way, passing beyond the dangerous point of his makeshift spear. The youngest one of the group had enough time for his eyes to widen, before I angled the sword in an arc that passed his belly and freed his insides. I came to a stop with him between me and the archer just as their next arrow was drawn to full again.
I seized the young bandit's shoulder and held him up on his feet by the front of his sun-cracked leather and cloth jerkin. His hand fought more with trying to keep his insides where they should be as he screamed, spear forgotten, but I was more concentrated on the archer.
They held steady, retreating a few steps with the arrow drawn back.
The old man stabbed at me from behind.
I stepped left, pulling the bandit struggling with his intestines toward the drive of the spear, and put myself in an open line with the archer. The old man's spear went into the younger bandit higher up, who grunted their pain, spasmed, and immediately lost consciousness. I released him.
It dragged the old man's spearhead still in him downward slightly. The elderly man's eyes widened in horror. I didn't have eyes for him in the moment.
The archer began to release their arrow.
As I wanted.
I twisted out of the way, narrowing to a side profile.
The arrow lodged in the old man's chest.
The old man staggered back at the arrow that sprouted in his chest, wheezing and reaching up for it instinctively.
It wasn't about being faster than the arrow could fly, though with the right shout I might manage it. It was about being faster than the archer's release and anticipation, when they were sure they had a target.
I left the old man with his friend on the end of his spear and an arrow in his chest, sprinting toward the archer.
The archer ran back a few steps to try to keep distance, as their fingers, nervous with fright fought to get an arrow nocked and pulled upon the shelf of their hand.
They managed to get it nocked on the string.
I was already there though.
The longsword, worn and battered though it was, came down upon the too weak material of their leather and cloth covered head. I felt his skull give, and split half his face still. The work done, I lifted the sword, and let him fall dead and twitching.
When I turned back to look toward where I'd left the old man, I found him running away into the rocky terrain. The arrow was still stuck in him.
Interesting.
It was curious that he went the other way instead of the ruin, but…
I let him run.
That suited me just fine, too. I kept a vague eye on him, letting him get distance.
In the meantime, I turned to the bodies that fell.
"Lydia," I began, without thinking.
The low tones of my voice rolled through the hills in a rumble.
I fell silent. Quiet among the men I'd laid low, I did my best to ignore my own verbal effort to stub my toe and shook my head.
Hopefully, she was happy with her life. She wasn't a good housecarl.
She was the best.
When I moved again, I started to search the bandits. Most of what I found left me unsure it was even better than what I had, but at least the axe wielder had a loose top garment something like a tunic, that fit. It wasn't as stained as the rest at the least.
Pacing among the bodies, I was disappointed to find that the only one with good cloth pants that might fit me had shit themselves upon dying. The leader's leathers were stained in a few ways that made me disinterested in climbing into them without a deeper wash, so I left them despite my consideration.
Otherwise, I salvaged what cloth I could. The garb they'd used to cover their faces were each about a foot wide of a pale material, which was airy and thin, and could be wrapped multiple times. Some kind of scarf-thing. Tattered, off-white half-cloaks adorned two of their shoulders, and I took one to help keep the sun off of me in my travels.
None of them had packs, which was telling, but one was carrying a fairly large waterskin strapped to their hip. That was fairly indicative even beyond the old man running away.
They have a camp somewhere nearby.
That was what I'd been hoping, too. I took a moment to pour a little into my hand to be sure what it was, and lifted it to my nose to sniff.
There was something off about it, but I couldn't put my finger on what. Just an undercurrent of fetid sweetness. I decided against drinking it, and instead slung its strap over my shoulder and quickly rubbed away the nasty water in the dirt.
I kept the sword from the big one, and liberated its poorly built scabbard from his hip. While the blade was as worn as everything the motley group seemed to have, it at least still functioned. At least it would with my strength behind it. I considered taking the spears, but their condition meant they were essentially just iron to me. Any animal that I could get within spear distance of, I could just as easily kill with a sword, or the dragonbone. I left them with the bodies, content with what I already had.
I took the simply made flatbow and after a second to test its draw, unstrung it. After I tied it against the quiver, and stowed my pieces of dragonbone with the two arrows inside it, I slung that too over my shoulder with the waterskin.
I glanced over the dead men's boots, but decided against it. Their cleanliness was severely lacking, and none had looked near my size anyways. Running in them for a while could cause more irritation than they prevented and they were not pleasing for the nose either.
I couldn't really offer the bandits a good burial, and I wasn't sure whatever the local custom was for dealing with them. Still, I knew most people didn't much like the thought of their dead just being eaten by the carrion, so I laid them over each other in a pile, and crouched down.
Giving an idle glance around, mostly sure the old man was still running for his life, I focused on the meaning I desired.
"Yol." I whispered. The sound was noticeably lower, quieter than the first time I'd tried to start a campfire. The rolling undertones carried over the hills like the crash of boulders on flat stone.
As my tongue touched the roof of my mouth again and I exhaled, flame leapt from my lips. My breath washed the wave over them, and for that act, it was suitable, bright yellow fire taking to their bodies and remaining garments readily.
I held my breath upon them until they were mostly ash, sustaining it until I had no choice but to gasp for another. Only then did the flow of fire cease. The bodies continued to burn by the remnant heat.
I kicked dirt over the edges, and deciding I didn't have time to watch them burn down, turned toward the direction the one that had "gotten away" went.
I gave chase by walking.
I followed his tracks for a few miles away from the road, and at a certain point they merged onto some kind of game trail leading onward. There was blood showing up on the trail more frequently. He was bleeding more.
He probably tried to remove the arrow.
Or unintentionally jostled it out of discomfort while traveling in his rush.
I found a spot where he'd stopped briefly, a depression in the dust that told me he'd needed to catch his breath.
Unfortunately for him, I was fairly sure no amount of just sitting around would get it back to him. The right side of his chest wouldn't be doing so good. It would only get worse with time. I knew my wounds.
It was dusk when I saw a little bit of smoke in the distance that told me my destination.
I approached the camp with a little caution, but seeing into it quite easily, relaxed. My sandals crunched across stone and rock noisily as I walked up the little path to the flat space that was hollowed out in the edge of an outcropping.
The old man was laid on a bedroll, unmoving. His headscarf had been removed, laid in the dirt nearby, revealing weathered skin, and wispy white hair on a balding crown. The fire he'd clearly been the one to start was getting low, and hanging slack in his right hand was a short piece of round iron, maybe a spoke, or some kind of tool for a purpose I didn't know.
Regardless, he'd clearly used it to try to cauterize his wound and prevent the bleeding. The arrow laid on the ground next to him.
Unfortunately, it did nothing for the blood on the inside that had collapsed his lung. Keeping an eye on his face, I reached out to check his wrist and then neck with my fingertips.
Nothing.
He was very dead.
I cast my gaze around the camp. It told me a lot of things. There was a bedroll for every person, and at each of them a pack. None unaccounted. More telling was the racks. There were a number of furs strung up on tanning racks, and the harsh smell of piss in the air. The whole camp stank terribly.
Like many bandits, they were not of a single profession or method. Likely, they came out to hunt in the remote area and "found" the occasional dead person or spoils. Their camp was mostly hide racks, smoked meat, and the essentials of a small hunting party. The cliff's edge above and the short, flat recess from the angled slope below offered respite from the wind.
They were hunters, opportunistic regarding their "prey".
It was a good place to camp. I turned my attention from it toward the direction of the road.
I could see a fair way down either side and to the ruin on the edge of the red waters that made up a fair bit of the horizon.
Good for all of their needs.
I couldn't imagine with how little I'd come into contact with anyone in a few hundred miles that they would often come across lone travelers, but clearly it wasn't their primary source of income anyway. Considering how poor their attire, armor, and weaponry, I was also suspicious that they ranged far and into less traveled areas in general anyways.
I threw wood on their fire, because they'd been kind enough to gather it for me, and then after a quick effort to search him, dragged the old man's corpse onto it. It was more respect than many bandits would be given back home, murderers, rapists, and thieves as they often were.
I took my time as the night fell digging through their personal effects. There was a small wooden box sat among the bedrolls, filled with a number of odds and ends. A pair of hoop earrings in some silvery metal. A golden ring that had what I was fairly sure was agate for a stone. There were a few lengths of very soft, shiny red material wrapped around thin wooden flats.
Silk?
I was fairly sure, but then again, it could just as well be something similar in feel.
It was all quite random and most of it didn't look particularly valuable, but I was almost certain it was things taken as loot. Likely as ill-gotten as my dragonbone trophies would have been.
Eventually, I found a pouch in one of the packs, filled with coinage. There were a few different varieties. Some were almost black, tarnished to silver, with the face of a man on one side, while others were more oval, with a dancer on the side. A different ovular coin, of which there were only three, had a ship displayed on it. The vast majority were all what I was fairly sure was copper though, small circular coins with a skull and crown depicted on the front and back.
There were a great many in the pouch, which made me doubt very much that they were worth all that much individually.
There were also a few waterskins, and a small keg of clear water. When I checked them the same as I had the one I'd found on him, I noticed they didn't have the same smell. So I threw the one I'd claimed from the body down and took two that seemed full. Then I had my fill of the little keg, drinking as much as I could and rubbing some up and down my face to wash clean.
I would have liked to know where they were getting their clean water, as it was probably somewhere nearish. My desire for a bath was strong, but if most of the water was that foul red stuff of the ruin, I was unlikely to find more than ideal hole dug at a near-surface spring somewhere.
I didn't intend to stay long either way, so I disregarded the impulse.
Not much else in the camp interested me, but I took the time to sniff test some of the hides to see what had been longest through their process and weren't as awful as the ones still going through it. Those ones I liked enough, I pulled down and added to the rolled pile of the already finished ones they already had stacked up for me. It was only a few, one clearly the same kind of hare I had killed before, another two like the strange-deer. One of them seemed almost like a wolfskin, but smaller and less thick of fur, so I naturally took it as well. It would be worth something, if I ever found traders.
After a few sniff tests on the smoked and drying meat they had on a rack, I ate as much as I could, and stowed some more still.
Everything else I'd taken a liking to got stuffed in the least stained pack and pulled onto my back, alongside a few choice pieces of firewood from their pile. Then, I took the thickest stick aflame from the central fire, and made my way out.
I left the old man to burn in peace.
I had no intention of sleeping there. The piss was giving me a headache.
With my torch to guide my way and the general idea of my direction and fair vision in the night besides, I made my way back to the road. The smell of the people near it, that I had burned as well, was unpleasant so I continued my journey instead under a rising moon with a slowly burning down length of wood. Along the way, I kept an eye on the roadside for a good spot.
I didn't explore the overgrown ruin, despite my vague curiosity. The fact that the hunters had chosen to camp far from it couldn't be a good sign, and while I was a little more ready to kill whatever came for me than a couple days ago, I wasn't exactly in a good position if something went wrong.
I kind of want to though.
I resisted the urge.
Barely.
I walked for hours into the night by the reflective light off of the stone beneath my feet. Eventually I found a good spot once the red shore had peeled away from the road.
In a short while, I had myself the essentials of my repetitive camp, and was ready to sleep. I didn't make a large fire, as it wasn't really necessary and I hadn't brought much of the hunters' firewood anyways, but the dim light brought me a little comfort while I bedded down for the night. I used some of the hides that didn't smell too offensive as a pillow.
My sleep was the most comfortable it had been in a few days at least, even if I was woken up multiple times in the night by bugs crawling on me.
When I woke the next morning, I continued my journey confident again that the road I followed had an end, and somewhere along its way was people.
While it was just me and the road that went on indefinitely again, my day felt subtly uplifted.
Despite that, I saw no one for the rest of that day, and mainly birds and small lizards for wildlife. For a long stretch of the road it passed along a coast on the opposite side of the road from the red waters of the previous night. That told me I had to be on a fairly narrow passage between two large bodies of water, and going by my memory, I was sure the one on my left was a true sea at least. Probably the same that the black dragon had slammed me in.
I didn't linger long enough to catch fish, and I had no desire to eat the birds or small lizards, so I continued on.
I drank from the dead men's waterskins, and enjoyed a quiet camp alone in that fashion for a couple days unworthy of remark. Though I came across two more broken down, gutted wagons and the obvious signs of prior passage in some capacity grew, I saw no further people.
Not even to be accosted by them.
I did come across more of the strange deer as I jogged along the road. The males were a bit larger but not too much. They had oddly shaped horns, mostly vertical and kind of flattened.
I didn't bother to hunt them. While I could have eaten more heartily, I wasn't eating the entire deer on my own, and I had enough spread out over days of the long lasting smoked meat to get by. I obviously didn't need more hides and while my pack's weight didn't bother me in the least, the fullness of its presence offered some awkwardness for my very long journey by foot. Given my lack of skill or time, the furs I had already claimed would be better treated anyway.
I'd still kept my own shoddy attempt out of some sentimentality to cover my dignity instead of using one of the better tanned furs.
Besides, it was hotter than an atronach's asshole. Not that I had tried or anything, despite being pretty fire resistant.
Considered?
Who hadn't.
I was a man of great impulse and unerring force. I still drew the line at being first to shove my prick into Infernace embodied, to find out what would happen. I might have with a few of the Daedric Princes if their statues were any indication, but that was neither here nor there.
I was used to Skyrim.
I was sweating.
The breeziness of my deer fur wrap was necessary to air everything out.
Her brother and sister arrived on Vermithor and Silverwing within a couple of days of news reaching them. Someone with less time observing the court in motion and less personal experience in history being made might have thought it a sign of their deep care for Aerea and relief at her survival.
She wouldn't go so far as to say they didn't care. In truth, she believed they did. She couldn't imagine not caring for her nieces and nephews if she had been the one to raise them. Lianna was a distant cousin, but one of her closest friends for their time spent together, before…
Before she died in her arms with her guts liquified and poisoning her inside out.
I have no one left.
No one she was particularly close with. No one she was even trying with.
Save Aerea.
Aerea, who had flown to old Valyria on Balerion the Black Dread the first time she'd ever rode her own dragon. Aerea, who had been forced to survive off of leftover slop from her dragon's breath. Her daughter, who claimed to have been beset by a sorcerer in the ruins, and struck them from Balerion's back before taking her leave of Essos for home again.
How?
With her hand, she'd said, as if it were simple.
Rhaena didn't want to suggest any dishonesty. Didn't even want the thought. She had no illusions that they weren't on tumultuous, rocky ground. So she wouldn't be the one to break it, even if she found it a hard story to believe. Their history, the constant back and forth of prior years, hung like a thin veil between them as well and that didn't help so she just decided not to give voice to her doubt.
In the end, she learned little but a tall tale to react to.
"A man climbed your dragon?" She asked.
"And I knocked him off!" Aerea asserted. "A sorcerer, I think!"
A naked man with a dragon's eyes, who spoke with words as thunder.
Of course if the man was dead, then it didn't matter either way. She would be remiss to denounce sorcerers entirely as they certainly existed, contrary to what most western lords would want to think. Their power was often not worthy of remark though, and weakening as time went on by some peoples' guess. What little spoken of Valyria in history by Visenya made clear that they had lived by two magics that carried on in House Targaryen still.
Blood and fire.
She'd asked her daughter details, but despite being certain the man was a sorcerer or a demon besides, the latter prospect ridiculous by every standard, Aerea couldn't claim witnessing some direct magic beyond that the man was unnaturally loud. Which made sense, since what magic she'd ever heard of was more showy than it was effective. She'd entertained her daughter's notions on the matter, but knew well enough from dealing with her own court to know when someone was just coming up with ideas based on a limited perspective of what they were dealing with.
Still, she entertained them because she wanted Aerea to feel heard. She wanted Aerea to know she cared.
And she wanted Aerea to understand that she couldn't go around claiming such things in front of others.
It could be manipulated.
The common people could take to very little, and if the wrong person wanted them to think a certain way, they would. It could make things difficult for her. Whether they were thinking her a witch who had laid with a demon or something else worse, it would be too easy for her to cause lasting issues for herself.
Rhaena knew a thing or two about causing headaches for yourself years later.
It was hard to believe that someone had climbed onto Balerion somehow and not been killed by the dragon, but that didn't really matter. What mattered was that Aerea had to tread carefully.
More carefully now that she presented a great risk to Jaehaerys's throne potentially. Balerion had made and unmade kings before. It probably should have been his real epithet, but she couldn't deny Black Dread certainly carried its own weight.
Considering he was named for a bygone Valyrian god named Bale it certainly didn't imply righteousness either.
As she watched Jaehaerys invite her daughter into his arms and squeeze her briefly, she couldn't unsee it all being an act of a fourth born son who came again to maintain his claim on the throne and keep up personable relations with the potential threat. It was beyond expectation that there wouldn't be an angle to the visit.
It was not often that the Jaehaerys and Alysanne would both depart and have no means of interacting with their court at the same time. While things were stabilized compared to seven years ago, he was still early in his reign.
She observed her brother and sister as they approached. A single kingsguard had ridden with them each, likely to balance the weight across the dragons. She knew neither of the men by name and their faces were disinteresting. They stayed back a short ways at a gesture from her brother, side by side, and took up a post.
Jaehaerys undeniably looked the part of a king, attractively built in the manner most common to a martially inclined man. Much of his light-golden blond hair was in a single thick braid, hanging long down his back, but some sat heavy and loose around his head at his bearded jaw and lips. He was long beyond the early growth of a moustache he'd claimed at thirteen. As he gave Aerea a hug, his violet eyes swept the courtyard keenly, taking in those few observing without reserve.
It was early in the morning, and she wasn't hosting a welcoming banquet. They'd arrived unannounced. Most of the castle was just beginning their daily efforts.
Alysanne was shorter, and more delicately built than either of them. Long of limb and with a small bust, she had been hovering for years at a nebulous visible age. The kind of body that let her be sixteen or twenty-nine, one day. While she wasn't yet twenty, Rhaena was confident that her sister would look like a fresh maiden for the next ten or fifteen years if they were kind to her. Her hair was blonde as any Targaryen, a little lighter than Jaehaerys's but tinged with some of the same honey, and she wore it up in a braid-mixed bun that was already seeing a few flying strands at the height of her forehead due to the travel. She would likely let it down sooner or later, and then it would have harsh waves, due to the treatment. If Alysanne let it sit long enough and let someone attend it, it would have been as straight as her own.
The king and queen were due a royal progress soon, and while that meant they traveled together, they were always interacting with their courts in various ways throughout and could be drawn to take heed to any issues affecting them. There was no way to do so effectively on Dragonstone.
Everything was set to a delay of a few days each way in conference except by dragon back. Even then, most dragons couldn't make that trip in a day. She doubted Vermithor himself could even.
It would generally take a matter of importance to get them both present, and she knew for a fact they were embroiled in arranging the finishing touches of the Dragonpit that Maegor had begun. They were already planning a tournament to celebrate it.
The king and queen were on Dragonstone because it was important to Jaehaerys's rule.
"I'm glad to see you both in good health." Jaehaerys said.
Rhaena forced herself into motion, wrapping her younger sister up in a hug since Jaehaerys already had his arms wrapped around Aerea. Alysanne was chilled from the wind over the sea even for the riding garments, so she pulled her own black velvet and fur cloak free and swung it about her sister's shoulders wordlessly. As late in the year as it was, it was fairly cool in general, and high in the sky on a dragon didn't make it less so.
As she did, it occurred to Rhaena that the last she'd spoken to her sister had been when Alysanne was doing her best to comfort her. Alysanne had tried, not unkindly, to be a pillar of support in the wake of the murders of her ladies-in-waiting. She'd sought to be her reprieve. A shoulder to lean on.
To take her in her arms and let her grieve out of sight of the court.
I denied her. Aggressively. Repeatedly.
It was too recent. The cut was too deep and there were old wounds between them all already.
But the truth was that the fault certainly lay with her.
Rhaena knew she didn't grieve well.
So she fought every effort Alysanne made.
When she grieved, she turned to anger and action, and if she felt like she didn't have action, then she resorted to quiet hours locked away to stew. Her father had once called her broody when upset, and despite the urge to argue against it she couldn't really deny that it had merit. She hadn't had time for tears after Aegon, and as life piled up the injustices, she swallowed the urge more and more. When she took her time for herself, she focused on things which felt good. The flights of fancy, of affection, of her favorites.
Temporary happiness is better than none at all.
It was just the way things were.
Yet the thought was ash in her mouth. The "way things were" was a source of life long struggle and pain for her.
How easy it is to fall back on it.
It wasn't an excuse, but it wasn't a statement that encouraged anything to be different either.
The last words they'd shared had been her shouting in Alysanne's face to leave.
The queen's face.
In front of the people of her court.
Somewhere in the depth of her chest, that was what made the inklings of shame stir. Alysanne was softer. More personable by most peoples' standards, and that act would have wounded the ego of even someone hardened. She suspected most lords or ladies would have carried the offense deep in their heart for years if they could not act upon it immediately. And Alysanne could have.
But the only thing Alysanne had done was accept it, and quietly depart Dragonstone after waiting a day further.
Waiting a day further for me, still.
It was just hard to put faith in any part of Alysanne, because it would have Jaehaerys's fingers in it either way. That was what it was to be someone's queen.
That's what's expected of us.
Her sister was a paragon of expectation, and unlike many simply performing, was deeply genuine. Alysanne cared about people.
That didn't make things simpler. It made them complicated.
"Thank you, Rhaena." Alysanne breathed, with a rosy-cheeked smile. She seemed almost surprised at the gesture, curling fingers in the material as she pulled it more securely about her.
Surprised.
That she would do something so unworthy of remark. The most base kindness. Not even the expectation of fealty, which was inevitable.
Just kindness.
She reached out, without thinking, like she had before a long time ago as Alysanne's elder sister by ten years to thread one of those stray wisps back around her ear. Alysanne's pale blue eyes brightened a little further. That, or her smile.
In the corner of her eye, she noticed Aerea was watching them interact despite Jaehaerys's attention. She glanced at her daughter, took in her appearance after a fresh bath, a night of full rest, a full belly, and a day to heal. She was reminded again, that for all of the times in her life that she had been doomed to come too late, that this time, somehow, she hadn't been.
Rhaena looked back to her sister.
"What is mine is yours." She told Alysanne, meeting her eyes and letting the focus linger. The queen's eyebrows climbed upward at that, in surprise. Not in the spirit that that wasn't obviously the case, but that it wasn't a matter of formality or fealty for her when she might have been saying it. Alysanne heard the words as she really meant them.
I won't be so late for everything.
Rhaena swept her arm around her younger sister and pulled her at a slight turn that was almost privacy without giving their backs to Jaehaerys. She took her a step away with the practiced motion that would have been impudence if Jaehaerys was in a bad mood or keen to make a point of anything and hang upon the expectations of address when a king is present.
A risk she took, because she was confident he wouldn't just then, given the precariousness of the situation with Aerea. It wouldn't bode well to risk antagonizing her, and at the same time, it gave him every opportunity to speak more personally, one on one with Aerea.
Something her brother wouldn't miss and eventually would have sought even without her indirectly causing it to happen.
"I treated you poorly." She admitted to Alysanne in a murmur that wouldn't carry. "Will you give me an opportunity to correct it?"
"That is not an apology." Alysanne whispered back, with a glance around.
Rhaena winced slightly.
She hadn't meant to just brush past it. She opened her mouth, and part of her was unsure how to even begin the phrasing. She hadn't apologized for anything in a long time. She provided reasoning, when questioned. She was used to doing as she wished, if it wasn't grossly outweighed or harmful to the kingdom. She didn't-
Alysanne's open mouthed little smile devolved into a breathy chuckle, born in the back of her throat.
Her focus returned to her sister's face.
"It's very like you." Alysanne said, instead of waiting. "I know what you meant. You've always been…"
Rhaena waited.
"Mannish, in some ways." Alysanne joked, with the curve of her lip and quick lift and drop of her eyebrow that was part mischief, part challenge. If that had been said to some ladies, much less a former queen or princess, they would have been fraught with insult. More so to her, who had such strong feelings regarding the men she'd put up with in her life. That was the point, partially.
The other…
It was the little eyebrow bounce that almost made Rhaena snort out loud. Instead, she found a more real smile pressing its way onto her lips.
Alysanne was poking her about her taste for women as well. Before she could offer a response, her sister forged on.
"We have a number of matters to attend to and were only going to stop in for the day, but I could spare a few days at least further, for you." She offered, with an air of faux-magnanimity. "But should you shut me from your chambers a second time, I'll not see you again until we have white hair."
Her sister lifted her chin at her a little, a warning but without heat.
"You may avail yourself of my chambers as much as you like." Rhaena said, with a roll of her eyes.
Alysanne's head turned slightly, the slight perk of her brows suggestive of some inner thought, but she didn't offer it aloud. She just shook her head gently.
Satisfied, Rhaena turned her attention back to where her brother was speaking with Aerea nearby.
"I'm told you have your dragon now." Jaehaerys said to her daughter, with just the right mix of nonchalance and encouragement. Alysanne's eyes slipped over at that to her husband for a moment, the gesture like a word unsaid, but she gave Aerea an encouraging smile.
Rhaena did her best to ignore the strange pride that welled in her chest at Jaehaerys's words for Aerea, but it made little difference. She was proud that Aerea had her dragon. While she might have questioned the sanity of pursuing the dragon that had killed her father, it didn't change that it was an act, riding Balerion the Black Dread, that would make Aerea among a remarkable few.
A remarkable few, known for great things. Terrible, too.
Jaehaerys's first real point of conversation struck a note of truth in her mind. One of the major reasons he was here.
The reason he was here was because her daughter who was once the true heir had claimed Balerion the Black Dread. The dragon of the prior king. The dragon that had united the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon that still greatly outsized Vermithor and presented a serious threat to anyone in battle, was claimed by the girl that would have been heir were it not for him deciding it should be him.
On the account of the Seven Kingdoms most preferring a male.
"Let me get you out of the wind." She suggested, lifting her voice.
Jaehaerys motioned to the kingsguard, and they all moved toward the yawning door that served as the main entryway of Castle Dragonstone.
"Have you still not named a new Commander of the Garrison?" Jaehaerys wondered, as they headed inside.
She'd thrown out the last when he'd produced no suitable answer on the people that had to have helped Elissa with the eggs. They hadn't gotten on particularly well ever since her arrival. She suspected most of his surliness was due to one of his sons abandoning their post and running off with a noblewoman some years prior and part of it had carried over toward her arrival, because in a way it was under similar conditions. Even if Dragonstone was by then, hers.
Feelings are rarely logical.
That he had failed to produce anything was a source of doubt.
A castle full of people and my garrison of soldiers, and not one could turn up who had helped her?
It was not beyond all possibility, but it was practically impossible.
It was almost certain that someone and likely more than one person, and just wouldn't give up their loyalty. It wasn't surprising to her really, as she had once held a love and loyalty for Elissa. So she'd dismissed the most likely parties to have seen something but not come with a good answer. Either the stables lied, or she went the stables, and a new unknown helped move the eggs and she took them into her care outside. Maybe even something she hadn't considered at all.
Either way, it stank of deceit.
I was furious, as well.
So a few others who had drawn her ire and suspicion went with them.
Nevertheless, that meant she had to be the most cautious of those in the highest positions and she had never been close with, and she preferred just as well that the soldiers answered to her directly anyways in the end.
For now.
Those three eggs would have been war. A war that she and Jaehaerys would have fought. Him, because it was a threat to his dynasty, and her because it was her mistake, and she would have to do so at his behest and for the Targaryens to come.
He would have kept Alysanne from it, if it had. Alysanne was his first choice for heirs, and he only had one so far. Daenaerys was still young and a girl at that. At little over two, they had obviously left her behind for what was intended to be a short trip.
"Should the dragons turn up, anywhere from here to Yi Ti, we will demand their return. They were stolen from us, they are ours by right. If that demand should be denied, then we must go and get them. Take them back if we can, kill them if not. No hatchlings can hope to stand against Vermithor and Dreamfyre."
"And Silverwing?" She asked. "Our sister-"
"-had no part in this." He interrupted. "I will not put her at risk."
As she always had, she bent to the requirements of her position and offered the fealty necessary under pressure to not risk the tenuous peace among their family.
"She is Rhaenys, and I am Visenya. I have never thought otherwise." She said.
The implication was there in layers. She and Alysanne were quite different personalities and she clearly was more important to him.
Obviously.
Alysanne was the queen. But in that suggestion that she was Visenya, she made him look at her as a woman, who was loyal to him. Loyal to his claim. It carried the note of a mere hint that he might have taken her for the spare if it was necessary.
Not because she wanted it, or because she trusted him. If anything, she said it because he wouldn't. She very much doubted he would ever make a demand upon the idea, because she was still twice widowed and he had the best possible prospect already in hand.
She said it because nothing further soothed a man quite so as the vague thought that a woman might be theirs if they only asked. Her younger brother who had seized power and ruled justly and fairly would just as well see it as recognition for his position.
That bought leeway.
That was the ugly balance of power that came with being an unmarried Targaryen woman with a dragon.
If many men of the court could be believed, she did whatever she liked whenever she liked. That couldn't have been further from the truth. The Seven Kingdoms wouldn't have been filled with so many eyesores if it were.
She glanced at Aerea and when her daughter's eyes found hers, offered an encouraging smile. She didn't know what Jaehaerys had planned for the meeting for sure.
Regardless, a fire that had only simmered in her chest grew.
The sea disappeared for a day, and then returned on the left side of the road for a couple hours before I was beyond it again.
Then, for the very first time in what felt like a small eternity, I came to a fork in the road.
A split.
Not a curve or a change of angle. The road I'd been following for days came to another at an almost perpendicular angle.
I could go right.
I could go left.
I just wasn't sure which one suited me better.
I looked the area over, and while there wasn't anyone in sight, there were more signs of travel than the way I came. There was a large stone marker nearby, and across its surface, a few worn symbols I didn't recognize. Nothing that pointed me to an immediate way to go either.
I drew in a breath through my nose and exhaled.
Well, if either are equally likely…
I went left on a whim, in the end. Resuming my jog, I kept my eye out for recent signs of people. Eventually, I came across what I thought might have been droppings of horses or cattle of some variety, but I couldn't be sure. All that remained on the road was long dried and I wasn't keen to go digging in it.
A few hours later, as I approached a new ruin, I noticed something new.
There were marks in the hard packed dirt beside the road.
Wagon ruts.
That was a good sign, but nearing the ruin, I acknowledged that I couldn't be sure it wouldn't be bandits the same. Given the dried, cracked dirt they were in, they could have been there for years for all I knew.
Judging by the sun it was around midday, so I gave into the urge to explore the ruins. What remained of them was an interesting mix of stone. Some of it reminded me, if only vaguely of the make of the road. Pieces of thick walls and the odd standing root of battlements or a tower. Its overall size didn't suggest a particularly large population.
I'd have guessed it to be some kind of outpost, or a small hold in the far past. At the least, it hadn't seen any attempt at reclamation or construction in many years.
There were two distinct kinds of stone used in vastly different amounts. A few parts seemed to have a similar uniformity to the stone of the road. Others were more eroded. More often than not, the stone I found was of the latter variety. Interestingly, most of it was covered in a clinging, dense ivy which I hadn't seen present in the ruin I'd passed by before.
Despite that, there wasn't a single good source of shelter in the ruin by my standards. I'd been sleeping under the sky against rock faces most nights, but that was infinitely better than the only option presented among the skeleton of an outpost: cellars.
Ruins were haunted places, and while I was as happy as any Nord to wet my sword, I didn't want to be dealing with vampires or who knew what else might come to check them for people to bother.
I'd survive, I was sure.
But my sleep would get interrupted.
The cellars were likely used for the same purpose they had often in Skyrim. Storage, for whoever had built the place in the past. I wasn't the first person to find them for sure. There were signs of people having been there before. I couldn't imagine why anyone would consider it a safe place, even ignoring a dank, sickening odor that clung to the walls.
I'd only needed a few steps down the stairs for its repugnant smell to drive me back up them. They were all like that. All the same, many bore the refuse of people of limited means.
I came across no items of interest. Which made sense. Places where wanderers passed, even if only once or twice a year, were usually picked clean. The ruin was right on the road, too.
In the middle of a split, even.
As I was coming around the cobblestone edge of one of the remaining, dilapidated walls with gentle arches, I smelled it again. That dank, nauseating sweetness I'd caught the edges of trying to go into the cellars. It was pervasive and strong in the spot and I slowed.
I glanced around, eyes going to the ground for another overgrown or dirt suggestion of a cellar entryway, but I didn't see anything.
Strange.
In the corner of my eye, something moved, reaching out toward me suddenly.
I jerked away from the pile of rock suddenly come to life and trying to grab me.
Atronach!
I drew the sword from my hip with a sweeping slash, and stepped by its movement. There was the tiniest bit of resistance, the scrape of iron on stone, and then I was beyond it. When I shifted my grip, reinforcing with my left hand and turning to keep it in my periphery, my eyes caught on something.
Red blood ran down the blade of my sword.
Head and body both fell in the next moment, but the former bounced and rolled away under the force of hitting the ground.
After the abrupt turn to violence, the ruin felt more ominous. I glanced around, wary of more attackers immediately as the smell was getting worse.
The blood from my weapon's nicked edge dripped into the grass.
Another droplet fell.
Another.
Another.
I looked at it, and then carefully lifted it to my nose. The nauseating sweetness was grew stronger and I grimaced, putting its red-stained flat further from me.
What is that?
I looked to the fallen man, and when it seemed truly like no one else was coming, took a careful step over alongside where his body was laid. I'd reacted by instinct to its attack.
Looking it over, I frowned.
Some kind of zombie-atronach?
It didn't have the same appearance or degree of protection as any casting of stoneflesh I'd seen before, despite there being some surface similarities, so I ruled that out. If it was some mage's practice, it was a failure.
An atronach would have put up a greater fight.
Still though, looking at the blood on my blade and its body, I couldn't shake the fact that it wasn't a corpse.
Or rather, wasn't one before my sword made it one.
A bit wary to touch it otherwise, I shifted onto my heels and straightened up.
It could be something more human adjacent.
It kind of looked like it, but it was really hard to tell.
That could be why the blood is so nasty smelling, too.
Vampirism and lycanthropy could be caught through the blood. I wasn't going to risk it touching the thing, when I could tell so plainly something was wrong with it. Among its odd, craggy outer shell, tattered rags were stuck, half-swallowed by the cracks. Either way, it had tried to sneak up on me and grab me, and that wasn't something anyone did in remote ruins unless you had poor intentions.
Sorry. If you were a person.
Training and my natural reaction had taken over. I wouldn't know what it intended now, but I was fine with the assumption of "nothing good", given its sorry state.
I took the time to wipe off my blade repeatedly. The smell still clung to it in spite of that though, so I backtracked through the ruin and built a small fire like I always did when I camped, using my voice. I didn't manage to keep the thu'um from rolling through the ruins despite my best attempt, but the rush of flame seemed smaller than the previous night. It could have all been in my head though. It wasn't easy to be sure.
While I was thinking about my next move, I took a bit of time running the blade through the flame. It was the only thing of mine that had begun to stink like the dead rock man. After a bit of rubbing it through the fire and then more dirt and repeating, the smell was gone.
I did it a little further just to be safe.
While I felt fairly sure Hircine or Molag Bal weren't in the wings, I could never be perfectly certain. I also wasn't going to risk anything that might have existed in their style.
Looking around where I sat beside my fire near the entrance, I followed the road I'd been traveling on with my eyes. It continued through the ruin and out the other side, but a new shoot branched off to the right and also went its own way.
Probably just stay on it.
Eventually, after I'd pissed on the fire and put it out, and the sword was back in its sheath, I straightened up and adjusted the quiver and pack on my back. I started down the road to continue as I was, but just as I was coming out the other side of the ruin, a thought occurred to me.
I can see which road branch has wagon marks.
It would cost me a little bit of time to check the roads on each side, but if I ran down the wrong one for days, who even knew how much time I could be out. The marks wouldn't be a certainty, but if one was more traveled than the other, that would indicate a lot.
I wish I'd thought of that sooner.
While I'd seen the odd part of a wagon off the side of the road in my travels so far, and even most of one the once, I'd only recently been seeing more signs of people. Including the bandits I'd killed.
Mind made up, I spent an hour down the road that went directly through the ruin from the angle I'd approached, checking each side of it as I went. I found nothing of note. If anything, the area was most overgrown, and getting more muggy. There wasn't even the old droppings I'd seen on the road I came from to suggest pack animals passing.
Probably going back toward the sea or a swamp.
I doubted it was the right one so I doubled back to the ruin and then went the other way. I found what I was looking for around a half hour later. Beside the road, there was a flat section of dirt that bore a distinctive, blackened and ashy spot, with sand half over it. Wagon ruts came from the stone into the dirt, and then resumed a path to the stone again.
A campfire.
Its location and the marks around it… either they'd circled or…
There were a couple wagons brought to a stop here, and used as the shelter.
I moved over and brushed back some of the sandy dirt and pressed my hand into ash carefully. It was all warm, but I couldn't tell if that was because of the sun's overbearing presence on the area, or because it was recent.
I looked for any other signs of people. I didn't know which side of the road people passed by custom. Skyrim preferred the right. It was a subtle thing, one not often thought about. If there was plenty of space for a camp and not some specific reason to change sides, generally, whatever side of the road you found a camp's remnants on could tell you the direction they were originally going even if tracks weren't. Casual decisions like that were more often left to habit to partially decide.
Without knowing anything about the tendencies of the people around, I couldn't even begin to predict it. There hadn't been any tracks on the road itself obviously.
Forward.
I could have gone back, but doubling back over my previous travels to go to the very first intersection I'd found would mean a lot more backtracking than I'd already done.
I took a chance and continued on, and deciding that there were probably only another five or so hours of daylight, picked up my speed. I'd be more tired by nightfall, but if the passage was at all recent, I could potentially close the gap.
If I found no further signs, it was just as well. I'd grown complacent in my running, but I might have been forgiven. It'd been days of nothing but my feet on the road, quiet nights by its side, and one small group of bandits who hadn't been much for conversation even if we couldn't understand each other.
I didn't find the wagons.
It was getting toward sunset when of all things, my nose caught something again. Not the same thing as before, just something unremarkably common and awful, but surprising. The smell of a farm.
Animal shit.
A horse, a cow, an ox, whatever it was, it was farm-adjacent.
I took a moment to slow at that, bending over at the knees and panting with exertion. My eyes scanned the edges of the road, the length of it. It didn't take me long to find the culprit, and when I grabbed a stick and gave it a poke, instead of just being one sun-cooked mix of plant fiber as the rest, this one gave in a little.
I glanced up the length of the road, but saw nothing.
So I resumed my run even as the sun started to edge down the horizon.
The sides of the road grew rocky again the further I traveled, rising up on either side of the road on occasion. I didn't let that dissuade me, but I acknowledged all the same that it put me back in a similar environment to where I had initially come down the hills from. It would have been a good spot for ambush, potentially.
It was after dark, when I was really, genuinely tired and just fighting off the urge to give up for the day, that I finally saw it.
The length of the road continued between the two areas of rocky terrain, nearby hills climbing up some without being overbearing. Far off, in the distance through the gloom and the limited light of the moon, a bit of yellow lit the expanse of shadow.
That was one of the dangers of having a campfire at night. On a moonless night, if it wasn't well positioned a campfire could be easily seen for miles with the right vantage.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and unwound the cloth scarf-thing I'd taken from the bandits, wiping my face down.
Oh.
I definitely had to stink.
I'd been running for days without a good soak, and no amount of a smoke bath would have made up the difference, though I had tried. With a chance at a second attempt, a second impression of people on the horizon, I debated the importance…
I mean, it's probably worth it.
While the bandits I'd met were certainly not as much about cleanliness as I would have liked it didn't mean the entire population reflected their behavior. Even in Skyrim, the banditry was generally more unwashed than the peoples in the holds.
Which said something.
Nords like their baths. There was a reason the saunas grew popular, at least in the holds. The further out, or smaller population villages had it a little rougher, and usually made due with interacting directly with the streams.
Shirking my things and stripping down some, I spared what water I could for a clean enough cloth and gave myself as good of a rub down as I could. It probably wouldn't help much without the chance to use some ash and fat to really get the oils free, but I hadn't saved any and I wasn't going to shout since I was clearly within the possible range for them to pick up on me.
Once I was satisfied with having wicked as much of the sweat from my balls and crack, I threw that head piece away. Just to be sure I'd never accidentally put it on again or something before I realized. I had enough junk already anyways.
Double checking the arrangement of my things, I set off on foot to approach the place they'd chosen to bed down and give the horses a rest.
Don't want to risk being seen as aggressive.
So I walked, which gave me enough time to calm down and for the excited jitters to fade.
Part of me wanted to run up.
To sprint down that road as fast as I could.
To run up to them, and seize them by the shoulders.
To shake them violently and shout in their faces that I had been running for TEN DAYS!
To ask them what manner of insanity drove them to make roads where there weren't even people!
But I didn't.
I didn't sprint, run, or jog. I just walked.
I walked a leisurely pace down the road with my hands held high and away from my weapons.
As I drew closer, my eyes took in the layout of their roadside camp. There were a pair of wagons, each drawn by a single horse. They'd pulled off of the road clearly and sat at an angle to create a slightly open triangular shape between them and the stone cleaving through the land, with the road its base. I could see people moving around the fire.
My eyes caught a caravan guard posted up, sitting on the lifted bench seating. Another, I watched patrolling a little further up the road, back and forth. That led me to searching further with my eyes for one on my own side.
Sure enough, as my doeskin sandals drew me closer, I spotted the final of the three taking watch sitting a short ways from the camp nearer my approach, in the shadow of a stone lip.
Now how am I supposed to hail them, so I don't seem like I'm up to no good?
I didn't have a lot of options, and I'd had more time to think since my previous try.
Mute it is.
I lifted my hands, and keeping them mostly up, begin to give a few rough claps every few odd steps, looking to the one on watch on my side.
I got closer than I expected, before he rose up. I heard him shout something to the others faintly, but didn't recognize a bit of it. Some members of the small camp immediately retreated into the cloth wrapped wagons.
Most just stood up.
All told, I'd counted twelve, assuming there wasn't already someone resting inside the wagons despite the early night.
The guard on my side drew his sword, but I kept my hands high as I approached further.
A man more round than he was tall, with a bald chin and thick moustache moved closer from the center of the camp, and called out to me.
The strangest thing happened then.
He said a handful of words at least, nonsensical and bouncy compared to the languages I knew. Not a single one was familiar.
Yet…
…I understood the suggestion of a word. As his lips were in the process of forming syllables, my brain spit something else out. His words came to a stop, just after, as he waited.
The last word he spoke was "trade".
What?
Post Notes:
This chapter isn't a response to anyone, if anyone feels any way about it in particular. Just to clarify. Most of this had already been written by the time of posting the prior chapter.
You might be thinking, oh did he make up that thing about Nords liking sauna? Nah, mentioned in some ES novel at one point.
I don't know if it comes as a great surprise, but this story takes place during the height of the Targaryen dynasty effectively. There's going to be Targaryen viewpoints mixed in here and there, as well as a few other characters I will touch briefly. I have some fun surprises up my sleeve that I've never seen used at least in the setting's fanfiction, but I'm also using a cast of characters that would be expected for the setting and story. If you just want to loathe the Targaryens' every action, it's probably not going to be the ideal story for you, admittedly. They're going to be involved in things. They're going to be an integral part of the story. Then again, loathing Targaryens is a practiced past time of Targaryens, so maybe the Targaryens are the friends we made along the way.
As you can probably tell by this chapter, the changes are abound.