"No, Charlize, that is not how you do it!" A cry echoed off the mountainside and into the Sea of Ghosts beneath the cliffs as parade of horses and a cart carrying more luggage than an army ascended Skyrim's blinding white roads from High Rock.
The most comfortable rider in the convoy rolled her eyes. How could her sister not be able to ride the practical draught horses of Skyrim? Considering the show horses they were raised with, they should be at ease on even a skittish elk.
Clucks of disdain cascaded down the ranks like falling pebbles. The offender of etiquette, Charlize, was shifting uncomfortably and trying to ride her horse side-saddle like she did at home. The lack of a side-pommel or stirrups would have resulted in her slipping buttocks-first into the snow if the family's manservant hadn't caught her first.
"That isn't how these Nord saddles work, mi'lady." He explained sheepishly as he helped her back into the correct position. His hands were on far too many private parts for him to know where to look.
"Look to how your sister rides! Adilia, show your sister." The mother cried out while sniffing in repulsion. "She may be uncomely but at least she knows what she's doing." After a momentary pause she sniffed harder, realising she'd summarised her daughter's life.
"Where? I can't see her in this blasted blizzard! She's too blonde." Charlize replied heedlessly.
Adilia rolled her eyes again into her ridiculous fur hat, the tip of which was flopping into her green eyes. She could be seen perfectly well.
"Just ride, Charlie." Their older sister sighed as she clutched her horse's neck in a vice to stay in the slanting saddle. "It's freezing here." She added self-consciously. The attempt to justify her strange riding position didn't go unnoticed but Adilia shuddered, she had a point. The six Bretons were completely bedecked in furs. Skyrim had a climate she could never see herself adjusting to.
"You alright, Brady?" The unstable sister winked from her horse's neck as he scurried past to return to his mount.
The man blushed so hard his cheeks were a beacon among his black hair and robes. "Perfectly, Lady Rona."
"She is not a lady yet, Braden. None of them are." Their father reminded him. His horse was no higher than the others' and yet instead of a matted fur saddle his posture made him appear as if he sat on a throne. Braden instantly bowed before it and busied himself in checking the straps of the cart to hide his embarrassment.
"We should be reaching Solitude soon, Lord Martel." He pointed out in a hurry to change the subject as he mounted his horse.
"Then do continue."
As they continued their harrowing journey, Adilia turned her gaze to the bulging cart in boredom. Braden's attempt to tighten some of the straps resulted in the opposite occurring, several boxes flew free and plummeted into the piles of snow. To her amusement some made it to the cliff edge where they rolled into the abyss of the sea. Bringing along dozens of boxes because they all needed twelve different outfits for one week in the city of shops was one of the most ridiculous things her family had done so far.
"How soon is 'soon', Brady?" Charlize complained. "These horses are so slow."
"Err… Should be the other side of this mountain." Braden deliberated.
"How do you know it's a mountain when you can't see the top?!" Charlize squeaked to compete with the howling wind.
They'd gone the long and cold way round and they all knew it. Adilia had watched her family look to the sea the entire journey, hiding from any acknowledgement of the mountains they'd come this way to avoid. Journey's end was near but as both the weather and the incline thinned out to make way for the forested road that led to civilisation, the exhausted women cried out.
"Is that, is that grass?" Lady Martel asked in disbelief. "And oh look, a little pathway!" She turned her horse in direction of it rather than the road where Braden stopped in conflict of where to go.
"Othella, the ways of the wild are not familiar to you." Her husband warned. She began to pull her horse back but it was too little too late, the interest of their daughters was caught. With the absence of the wind they began to hear the faint clashes of battle.
"Is that…" Rona murmured as she and her youngest sister edged forwards to get a closer look.
"The barbarians?" Charlize whispered with eyes as wide as they would have been if she was telling the scariest tale in the world. By the way her mother paled, she might as well have been.
"This far north?" She clenched her horse's reins like they were a lifeline and looked to her husband. "But you said…"
"Impossible." Lord Martel replied astutely. His wife began to relax, then an arrow flew into a tree next to them. Her scream scared all the bird flocks out of the area.
Braden was the first to react to the pandemonium of rearing horses. He grabbed the bridle of Rona's first, even though the panicking Lady Othella was right next to him. It quietened instantly once it realised the only threat was Othella's whimpering. Rona nodded at him, shaken but unharmed. Charlize's horse was even faster to calm. She seemed to have enjoyed the sudden change of altitude, even though it almost de-seated her again.
"I'm here, my lady." Braden finally reassured Othella after checking on all her daughters. She nodded in between dramatic breaths.
In the midst of all this Adilia was attempting to make her blasé horse move past the bushes of the fir trees to get a closer look at these supposed barbarians. Then the battle-hardy creature began to snort at something that disturbed the foliage.
In a flash of gold the arrow's true target revealed himself among the spooked horses and dived into the field with the assailants. His accomplices soon followed but their slower pace allowed Lord Martel to grab their leader's attention in the confusion.
"What is going on here?" He demanded as lightning sparks fizzled in the hands of the towering elf.
The Justicar's head turned very slowly. When his ethereal yellow eyes met the Breton's with a sneer, there was no doubt as to who was looking down on the other. "Bandits have interfered with official Thalmor business.". Each word dripped with so much detesting that exactly who he was calling bandits was unclear. "We suggest you be on your way, half-breed."
The Breton lord turned red but the Thalmor was ready with a sky-reaching eyebrow that was somehow more threatening than the battle behind them. The sparks flickered in his hands again.
"Father, maybe this isn't the right man to be asking for directions." Adilia rushed forward between them, abandoning her quest for a better point of view.
"Ah, look at that!" The Justicar remarked dryly. "One of the mutts has a brain." The sparks that had died down burst forth to electrocute a bandit who'd crossed the path in an attempt to sneak up on a Thalmor soldier.
"Let us go before they return, my lord." Braden pleaded as he'd calmed Othella and her horse down enough to get back on his own.
"Then…Yes." Lord Martel said idly as he glared at the diminishing back of the Thalmor Justicar. "Why are you delaying, Braden? We are expected before nightfall." He snapped his fingers at the man and they practically bolted forwards at a trot until they were out of sight of the clearing.
Adilia followed them at a glum pace. Half-heartedly she cast a look back over her shoulder and was surprised to find she briefly had the clearest view of it. The bandits and Thalmor had moved on too far to see how the tide of the battle had turned but some things were left in its wake. The fallen bodies of two gleaming gold Thamor and a bandit for example. Only one of them groaned and tried to crawl away to cover. A cascade of lightning suddenly came from behind a hollow in the ground and was abruptly cut short. No more sounds of battle were heard and the fallen bandit's allies came out of their positions for him. Adilia frowned, she'd never seen bandits like them. The fur they wore was scant and copper-coloured, and they had adorned themselves with skulls. She was over fifty metres away and yet one of the bandits tensed up and looked directly at her. She wasn't sure if he squinted or scowled at her through his feral face-paint, then he reached for the spiked bow on his back.
An army at her heels wouldn't have made her flee back to her family faster.
The sun had set by the time the Martel family made it to Solitude's gates. The sky burnt orange but the city glowed. After so long in blizzards with only a torch to guide them, lanterns were like a warm bed to their eyes. Almost blindingly so.
One by one they dismounted at the gates to the inner courtyard. Gradually they realised that they'd come across the rarely heard guard gossip.
"I told you, these fancy milk-drinkers in their fine furs drop the tankard in front of you on purpose, I've seen it myself!" The guard shut his mouth as soon as Lord Martel scowled at him. Deep inside he was thanking the Divines that their helmets hid their faces.
Adilia stood by the Khajiit camp her parents refused to acknowledge and exchanged amused glances with the leader. Her parents had refused to dismount their horses at the stables so a young apologetic guard was being forced to play stable-boy with Braden. They were trying to get all the horses away before Lord Martel turned into a Dwarven Centurion with all his sighing.
"A pretty trinket for the lady?" Said a purring voice from behind her. Adilia turned to see the caravan's leader holding out a deep green pendant shaped like a tooth.
"What's it worth?" She asked warily.
The Khajiit grinned. "Not 'how much?' Dar'jiin thinks the lady is wise." He then shrugged from his sitting position and spun the pendant by its black string from his claw. "What is it worth? Nothing. Pretty, though. It is a gift, Dar'jiin likes those who can smile with him."
He held it out to her. It swung and glinted in the orange light of the many lanterns. There were something underwhelming about it that drew her to it more than all her gold jewellry. "Then thank you." Adilia smiled and quickly tied the pendant under her fur cloak and green robes so it would stay unseen.
"May the road deliver you to somewhere warmer than this cold bird's nest, Breton of High Rock." He said to her and returned to his wares like nothing had happened.
"On that we can agree on." She grumbled back. Dar'jiin laughed, her mother frowned at him but found nothing untoward; she thought he was coughing on a hairball.
"Are you sure that was wise?" A female of Dar'jiin's camp asked him quietly from the firepit.
"Eh, what's the harm? Dar'jiin was given a token he can't sell but was more than happy with just his life. The fools think they actually compensated him." Dar'jiin replied. The female sighed in dissatisfaction but left it at that.
Charlize was already blowing a raspberry at a guard behind a nearby tower's slit window when Braden and the young guard returned in record time, only to be turned into cart horses to pull the luggage up to the city doors.
Their mother managed to look more appalled at her youngest daughter's behaviour than she had at nearly being shot with an arrow. "That is not how a young lady acts!" She gasped and propelled Charlize into the opening doors of Solitude. She ranted all the way, purposefully not mentioning her daughter's name to keep it from the guard who was now snickering.
Rona and Adilia shrugged at each other, following them side-by-side. Neither looked back at the guard their father tipped to watch over their cart until Braden sent somebody to collect its contents. Nor did Adilia pay attention to the borderline racist glare of distrust he sent the Khajiit she'd been laughing with. It would seem more out of place if it didn't happen every time they went to a city.
"You've got to stop doing that for every family who comes here, Howard." Muttered the guard who'd taken the bribe to the young and breathless one.
"But they're noble!" Howard hissed back.
They shut the doors behind the family and the guard shook his head in shame. "Don't pick up the tankard, Howard. Don't pick up the tankard."
Oddly, they found the inside of the city less blinding to their eyes than the outside, though the momentary relief was put off by the sheer amount of smoke in The Winking Skeever.
"We'll only have to stay here for the night, Braden will have our proper rooms sorted tomorrow." Lord Martel told them as he, too, tried to stem the stream of tears from his eyes. "Go to the largest room you can find, I'll sort it out. An inn at night is no place for Charlie."
The women didn't hesitate for a moment before making their way to the stairs with forearms over their eyes and noses, flinching every time they went past a smoking candle. Charlize coughed dramatically but she got no sympathy from the soldiers and manual laborer patrons of the inn. Adilia, however, stayed in the shadows behind her father. The flying spittle, raucous laughter and staggering drunks supporting themselves on every passing female would have to be coped with, the talks that were going on at the bar Lord Martel strode up to were far too interesting to miss.
Four Imperial soldiers still in their Legion armour were huddled over the bar in deep talks with the owner of the inn. The conversation was apparently reaching a stagnant point because when he saw the lord fresh in from the street he beckoned him over with a new vigour in his eyes.
"Did you see the amount of lanterns they have out there?!" The innkeeper asked in hushed whispers, cloth and tankard in hand.
Lord Martel stiffened at being addressed so directly, but his urge to grumble was stronger than the one to reinforce decorum. "They almost blinded my family and I."
"I don't even know why they've got us down here." A soldier to his right mumbled over his untouched drink. "Who in Oblivion would be coming to the capital when they've got Markarth at their heels?"
"The High King's men need to let us prepare, did you hear about Hammerfell? They cast out the Dominion, they'll be coming over here next." Another soldier put in.
"We came across some Thalmor on our journey here. On the North road." Lord Martel added nervously. The soldier concerned over the Dominion grunted to further his point.
"You came here from High Rock using the coastline?!" The innkeeper asked in disbelief. "Still, I can't blame you for wanting to avoid the Reach. You won't have heard anything good come out of there for a few years."
A man so sagged down in his chair that nobody had noticed him straightened his Redguard uniform and rose. "Let's be straight here, Corpulus." He slurred at a point behind the innkeeper's ear. "We just got back from fighting those knife-ears. You think everybody's suddenly going to play nice? Nuh-uh."
"Shhh, I have elves in here!" Corpulus hissed and frantically scanned his patrons for elves in earshot. He nervously smiled at those that were.
The guard continued as if he'd never been interrupted. "We need to be preparing our city. Using up all the oil to see bandits that aren't there is…" He waved his hands wildly, thinking that was enough to convey the insanity of it. "Think of all the barrels we could be making. This city has one hill. Roll enough fire barrels down it and poof!" His hands flew up again. "The knife-ears love fire barrels." He faded into bitter chuckles. The few elven patrons began to scowl over at his raising voice. Corpulus gave up polishing tankards and used the cloth to wipe his own brow.
"Shut it, Pion, we have no need for your war stories here." The most sober of the soldiers chastised.
"Says the Legionnaire." Pion mumbled as he sank back into his chair.
The innkeeper turned back from giving a young boy instructions and seemed to be suddenly reminded Lord Martel was there. "I'm sorry, what did you need?"
"Uhh…" The lord tried to remember through a confused frown but one matter kept resurfacing to his mind. "What do you mean by bandits?"
"Oh, well–"
A soldier butted in before the innkeeper could tell every last rumour that had come through the inn. The hour was late and he had no time for stories. "You heard of the Reachmen down in Markarth? Now they call themselves Forsworn and they're angry. A few were supposedly spotted further north than they should be and bandits have been more active than usual. Somehow the two were put together and now we're wasting resources waiting for them."
"So somebody told the High King it was a good idea to put the Legion on goddamn guard duty." Said a red-faced soldier who'd been silent until now. He poked the near-snoring Pion in the ribs as he did so.
"They've never cared about anything but the Reach for centuries," said the soldier who'd shut Pion up. "Gods, I got better taxes from them than I did any Jarl! They just needed a goat once in a while."
Adilia's eyebrows raised at this new information, but her father tensed up like a volcano that was about to erupt. "Now you listen here and listen well." He quietly seethed to all of them at the bar he placed his hands on. "The 'Forsworn' are savages and witches. They took my son as they took all of Markarth. I don't care for Talos but Ulfric Stormcloak cast them back out into the dirt they belong in. That's a sight more than the Legion ever did."
The soldier's hackles began to raise. The lord's glare sat them back down, but Pion returned to the conversation much too late. "Hey now, we were out fighting the Great War while you… What do you high folk do?" The soldier next to him stuffed a bread roll in his mouth.
Corpulus was the one to take the job of smoothing things over. "Now I think of it… We were told to look out for some nobles from High Rock. That was over a week ago now though. What was it, Martins?"
"Martel." Adilia's father corrected him. "We took the long road."
"Ah yes, so you told me… Well, the Bracken-Thrones won't be able to see you tonight, they've got some trouble with a lost boy, but I'm afraid I don't have any rooms…" The pouch of gold that was placed on the table was larger than soldiers' yearly salaries. "Of course the largest room we have should suffice." Corpulus laughed nervously and pocketed the pouch before anyone could get a good look at it. Lord Martel leant back off the bar in satisfaction, allowing Corpulus to see the young woman behind him for the first time. "Oh, look!" He cried apologetically. "All our jabbering and I'm getting a queue–"
"Adilia, I told to go upstairs with your mother!" Lord Martel barked and behind his back Corpulus rolled his eyes at the drama of nobles.
"Will you be needing anything?" Corpulus smiled, interrupting the argument he was so used to seeing unfold with his own children.
"No. Thank you." Lord Martel replied curtly. With a sigh he guided his daughter to the stairs at the other end of the inn with a hand on her back.
"Good night sir!" Corpulus called after them and decided it was his turn to slump against the bar.
"Bracken-Thrones," The sober soldier snorted derisively. "He'll be lucky to get an audience in a month. They've got us combing the city for this kid. How are we supposed to find anyone with only 'a green tooth necklace' as a description?! Do we get royal edicts to look down people's necks next?!"
Adilia was so startled she stumbled over her own feet and would have fallen if her father hadn't caught her. The pendant went flying out of her robes, thankfully nobody seemed to notice but it still made her heart skip a few beats.
"I wouldn't mind that." One of the soldier's inebriated companions chortled.
"I'll be needing your muscle tonight, boys." Corpulus informed them gravely. "I just gave them Borrinjar the Bull's room."
Father and daughter went to their rooms with the echoes of the soldiers' guffaws following them.