Foreword:
Fifty years after the Oblivion Crisis and around seven years since the events of the Infernal City, the story continues. Forces gather at Chorrol's Fighters Guild ahead of a long overdue task. The Great Forest of Cyrodiil sometimes holds unexpected secrets and threats. As do the skies above.
Authors note: With some artistic license, all reasonable effort made to maintain general parity with existing canon established in Oblivion, The Infernal City/Lord of Souls, and Skyrim.
Rated M for mild adult content.
Although it should go without needing to be stated, let it be said: Bethesda owns The Elder Scrolls and all related materials. I am merely contributing my own interpretations in a public forum and no profit is derived or intended from my work.
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Additional note: This story follows on from "The Sons of Baroth: An Elder Scrolls Novel". Some effort has been made to allow this story to function as stand-alone. However, I still recommend reading the previous story for a more complete perspective. Of course, 'to get the heart of the story, you oughta go back to the beginning'. ;-)
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Under Autumn Skies: An Elder Scrolls Novel
Greg J Miller
~O~
Chapter 1
Sundas the 26th of Hearthfire 4E49
It wasn't yet all that late in the evening. It would have passed the hour of eight not so long before. The muffled noises from the main tavern level of the Oak and Crosier Inn drifted down from above. The heavy timber that separated the main level from the basement level rooms below was substantial, but not so much that it blocked all the sound coming from above.
Alexander Pinewatch heard the door to the room open and close behind him. The lightly framed Nord didn't turn away from what he was doing. He knew exactly who it was. He could tell from the familiar sound of her footfalls and the particular way that she jiggled the lock. Added to that, he'd been expecting her back from the basement level bathroom at any moment.
"What are you doing?" Monika Northwind asked the question in casual tone.
Alex responded just as casually. "Oh, just washing those pears." He continued with the task, washing the bulb-shaped fruit in a basin on the long side-cupboard and then carefully placing each one into another large bowl.
She made a slight tutting noise as she hung the towelling to dry. "No, why are you doing it?"
"They need to be washed." His tone leaned more toward the matter-of-fact, than any sort of provocation. He turned only briefly to glance in her direction.
Monika had her back to him. She was still busy with adjusting the towelling and clothing hanging on the rack in the corner. He noted that she was wearing nothing but a light cotton shirt that only barely reached her upper thighs. He took that as a fair indication that they wouldn't be going back upstairs. He kept to the task at hand.
Still running a comb through her damp hair, Monika sidled up behind him, peering down over his shoulder. She stood just slightly taller than Alex. "They won't be ripe yet."
Alex nodded silently with a mild smile. He continued with washing the fruit.
Monika reached past him to check one of the cleaned pears in the second bowl. She wrinkled her nose as she sniffed. "Gonna need at least a couple of days." She checked another one. "Yeah, probably two or three days."
Alex didn't say anything. In passing, he noticed how her fair hair looked almost as dark as his own when it was wet like that. He silently admired the shape of her ears, the way that they came to a slight point at the top. Aside from her subtle bronze colouring, her ears seemed the only obvious indication of her mixed parentage.
Stepping back, Monika spoke again. "That's a lot of pears. I do like pears, but we'll never get through all that before they spoil." She returned to combing her hair.
Alex remained silent, only nodding slightly. Over the past year or so, he'd grown accustomed to the slightly unusual sound of her voice. Despite passing more than a decade living in the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil, Monika's mixed accent still carried the cadence of her formative years in High Rock, along with her earlier time in northern Skyrim as a young girl.
Alex removed the last couple of pears from the sackcloth bag and slipped them into the basin of water. He shook his head as he dropped the bag at his feet. "It was kind of that farmer to give these to us, but this old sack really is filthy."
A prolonged pause passed as Monika continued combing her hair. Alex's own accent was hardly typical of the Chorrol locals. It wasn't even typical for someone who'd lived most of his days in Falkreath, but that had more to do with his Imperial grandmother. It had been her matriarchal influence that resulted in the Pinewatch family name. That sort of thing wasn't so common among most Nords of Skyrim.
Monika finally responded. "Well, we did get rid of those ogres." She took the old sack from the floor and hurled it over near the door. "That can get tossed out tomorrow morning."
"Henrik and Crito did just as much to help as we did." Alex's comment referred to the other two Guild Fighters leaving empty handed. Alex had actually shared some fruit with Crito Catius, but Henrik didn't want any of the pears, grumbling that red apples would have been far more worthwhile.
Her amber coloured eyes rolled slightly. "Yeah well, he wasn't real happy with those other two. They did get two of his sheep killed."
Alex glanced back to Monika. "That was an accident."
She raised her eyebrows. "Don't expect the farmer saw it that way. He did lose another two sheep."
Alex decided to let it go, looking down and away with his darker eyes. The way he saw it, if they hadn't been sent there to deal with that pair of ogres, that farmer up near the Battlehorn Castle estate would have ended up losing far more sheep than that.
Monika sidled up to Alex again. She ran her hand across his right cheek, noticing that he'd shaved when he'd gone to the bathroom. Her hand shifted upward to tussle at his mess of dark brown hair. "Did you wash your hair?"
"Yes, of course." His tone bordered on mild indignation.
"With warm water?" She didn't seem convinced.
"Yes, of course."
Monika harrumphed, expressing her mild scepticism as she took her comb to his slightly messy brown mane.
Alex would have rather cut his hair much shorter, especially at the back, but Monika preferred it longer like that. Since she was the one cutting it, he just went along. Except during the peak of summer, he'd mostly grown used to it. In any event, it wasn't worth any sort of argument.
Monika tutted behind him as she worked the tangles from his moderately lengthy locks. "I reckon I should get a potion for your hair. Something that helps with tangles."
Alex shifted the subject away from himself. "I wonder why pears do not float."
Monika leaned around to return a perplexed expression. "What?"
"Pears. They sink in water. Instead of floating, like apples."
Monika looked down at the last green pear sitting on the bottom of the basin and shrugged. "Maybe there's just more juice in pears, or something like that."
Alex wasn't convinced. His expression said as much.
Monika shrugged again, with a frown and a crooked grin. "Maybe it's just that apples and pears are different." Finished with the task of combing his hair, she stepped away.
Alex still wasn't convinced of that logic, but he didn't have any better explanation to offer. He finished washing the last piece of fruit, placing it in the bowl with the others. "I cannot say that we really saw pears back in Falkreath."
"No?" Monika indicated she was listening; though she was busying herself with hanging out their leather armour and boots to air near the small fireplace.
Alex continued, slipping back into his old farming persona. "No. A few different varieties of apples, but no pears. Grandfather Erik once told me that he did try to grow some pear trees, after hearing that some farmers near Riften were doing it." He shook his head. "They did not do very well. Falkreath was probably too cool and wet for pear trees."
"Yeah, you're probably right about that." Monika's tone sounded more like she was just being agreeable, rather holding any opinion. She'd most likely never given it any thought.
Alex took the wash basin and emptied the content down the small drain in the corner nearest to the fireplace. It briefly reminded him of the cramped sewer system below Chorrol.
They'd needed to go down into those sewers just a couple of months before. Of course, it was a Fighters Guild contract that took them down there.
It was all about rats. It was fair to assume that the sewers beneath the city always had a lot of rats down there. However, once it got to the point that the rodents were busting out through a breach in the West District of the city, something needed to be urgently done about the numbers.
For the most part, the guards of the City Watch could generally be counted upon to kill rats on the street, if they actually came across them. After all, it was their place to protect the local citizens. However, they weren't too keen to head down into the tunnels below.
Still, something had to be done. Accordingly, the local Fighters Guild had been contracted to deal with the problem at the source.
Since a lot of the Guild Fighters were still away at the time, it was just Alex, Monika, Montrose and young Vinus Odiil going down into the sewers. The contracted task seemed simple enough. They needed to kill as many rats as they could over the period of a week and then drag the carcasses back up for burning.
The smaller rats were bad enough. Perhaps worse, since they were harder to hit. The larger ones didn't die so easily, unless a good strike was landed quickly. Those big ones were like the skeevers in the forests around Falkreath. They were easily the size of small dogs.
The work of killing the rats was made more difficult by the stench down there. On top of all that, several visits to the healers at the College of Whispers had been necessary. It wasn't so much about the relatively minor injuries. It was about the diseases they were likely to be infected with from the rats or other mess in the sewers.
Monika interrupted Alex's idle thoughts. "I don't reckon this can be repaired." She was examining Alex's bow again. "I'd say you're gonna need a new one."
"I was thinking the same." He came over to take another look.
Monika wrinkled her nose. "The smith might take it to melt down for the materials, but I'd say it's too far gone to be fixed."
Alex looked at the elven bow with disappointment. The main frame of it was bent to the point that it had cracked in two places. "I had grown used to that one."
Monika looked back, chastising him with a crooked grin. "Maybe next time, you'll follow my lead."
Alex's bow had been damage the previous day as they were dealing with those ogres at that farm near the Battlehorn Castle estate. He'd been too slow to change from bow to sword when that last ogre got in too close. The pale-skinned beast managed to get near enough to swat his bow with its huge fist. The force of the blow ripped it from his grasp and slammed it into the boulders at the edge of the farmland.
It was probably rather fortunate that his bow was the only thing to suffer any serious sort of damage. Aside from Henrik's badly bruised shoulder, none of them actually sustained any notable injuries. Of course, those two ogres hadn't fared so well. Their days of stealing sheep and busting up farms were done for good.
Alex was put in mind of his first encounter with one of those big ogres. That was back before he'd joined the Fighters Guild, just after he'd first met Monika. Of course, back then he didn't have much idea of what he was doing. They'd only survived that encounter through a fortunate combination of circumstance and dumb luck. That unusual variant of an ancient Nordic skill that he'd inherited from his grandfather's bloodline also played some part in it, but that wasn't something he could really rely upon. Nor was it something that he should allow to become broadly known.
"Are you gonna help tidying up?" Monika's tone was one of mock annoyance.
"Uh, yes… sorry." Alex had been just standing there looking at the bow.
He put aside the damaged bow and came over to help with the task. There wasn't really all that much to do. It would take no more than a few moments.
As he stacked the weapons neatly, Alex gave voice to a passing thought. "You had said that Battlehorn Castle had belonged to the Champion of Cyrodiil." He'd seen that stone castle west of Chorrol before, but hadn't actually known of that particular detail until just a couple of days before.
Monika shrugged. "Yeah, used to. That's what they say."
"But that lord does not own…?"
"Nah, I heard it's belonged to County Chorrol ever since the Champion disappeared."
"So, Lord Athos?"
"He's not a proper lord. He's just a castellan… keeper of the castle. He gets to live in the place, maintain it and make whatever he can off the lands, but someone else will take his place when he's gone. Just like he took over from the last one."
"Hmm." Alex murmured. He was thinking of other places that he'd learned had also supposedly belonged to the Champion of Cyrodiil before disappearing decades before. The Arborwatch Tavern in Chorrol was one, back before it was a tavern and inn. There was that mansion on the High Street in Skingrad and he'd also heard of places in other cities of Cyrodiil.
Alex found it hard to believe that any one man could have done half the things that were attributed to the Champion. Closing all those gates to the Oblivion realm of Mehrunes Dagon. Becoming the head of both the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild and all those other things. It seemed to him, like there must have been some measure of exaggeration to the tales.
"Hey." Monika drew his attention. "Make an early night of it?" She'd obviously decided that things were tidy enough.
"Yes, okay." Alex was feeling just a little fatigued, but not really ready to fall asleep.
Monika moved about the room, putting out the candles and lantern. "We should drop in at the blacksmith's store in the morning, before heading up to the Fighters Guild."
"Okay." Alex agreed easily. He knew what she was suggesting.
"If we're lucky, they might even have a bow like the last one you got from there."
"I hope so." Alex glanced upward as he removed his shirt, noting the muffled noise coming from the tavern area above with mild annoyance.
"Yeah well, either way you need a new one before we head off this week." Monika discarded her garment and shuffled into the bed.
Alex did the same, extinguishing the last candle, before settling in next to her. After camping outdoors the previous evening at that farm near the northern end of The Black Road, he thought that the bed in their rented room felt appropriately comfortable.
Alex still wasn't feeling quite sleepy enough. His restless thoughts drifted toward the earlier part of that day. Those four Guild Fighters left that farmland behind fairly early in the morning. Since there was no great hurry, they took their time along the road. They got back to the city just before noon and then headed straight up to the guildhall.
The Guild Master had been far too busy with the visiting Legion commanders to see them. Accordingly, Francois Montrose, the Breton second-in-charge, had handled their reports and paperwork and told them to take the rest the day.
Catius and Henrik remained at the guildhall, since they generally bunked there anyway. Monika and Alex had already decided to head back to the Oak and Crosier.
Before they'd made it out the front door, Henrik and Catius had already resumed that argument they'd been having along the road. They'd been going on about whether stewed pears or apples made the better pies, as well as the benefits of using cinnamon over other spices in that kind of thing.
Alex imagined that either the Guild Porter or Montrose would have put an end to their noisy nonsense soon enough, especially with those visiting Legion commanders upstairs.
After pausing to sample those sweetcakes from the street vendor in the main plaza, Monika and Alex arrived at the Oak and Crosier. Given that the midday rush had already come and gone, it might have been more peaceful there, if not for the arrival of those rowdy Nords from Bruma's guildhall.
Frederick the Loud had arrived in town with three of his comrades. Since they'd turned up early, they weren't motivated to head for the guildhall. Instead, they'd elected to report directly to the most convenient tavern. Unfortunately, it was that place.
After those other activities that kept the Fighters Guild busy over the summer, things had been slowing over the past weeks, but that was all about to change. That task that took them near the Battlehorn Castle estate was slightly unexpected and it was likely to be the last thing before what was planned for the coming weeks.
In a couple of days, things were going to get much busier. There'd be more guild fighters turning up at Chorrol very soon. Once everybody had arrived and everything was organised, the Guild Master would be sending everyone off on task.
"What's up?" Monika whispered with a slight tone of irritation.
Alex had been fidgeting and shifting for the past several moments. "Nothing. Just… just not feeling sleepy."
"No?" She nuzzled up close and nibbled playfully at his ear.
Just then, a loud noise echoed from above. It coincided with a booming shout and was immediately followed by raucous laughter.
After a pause, Alex concluded the obvious. "That must be Frederick."
Monika chuckled mildly. "Forget about Frederick." She shifted position, moving up to nibble at Alex's lower lip.
He responded accordingly. Some length of time passed by before the notion of going to sleep came around again. By then, Alex had no trouble dozing off.
~O~
