Chronicles of Weatherleah
Disclaimer:
All characters and locations are the sole property of by Bethesda Softworks LLC.
Synopsis:
A continuation to (and a brief prequel to) the Chorrol-based quests "Separated at Birth", "A Legacy Lost", and "Sins of the Father". The Breton Twins, Guilbert Jemane and Reynald Jemane, struggle to cope with the farmers life after reclaiming their birthright, the remote farmstead at Weatherleah. Meanwhile there are more revelations uncovered about their complex family history and old enemies resurface.
Notes:
My first fanfic, so please review!
Chapter I
A Legacy Lost
The noon sun hung high in a cloudless blue sky above the endless greenery of the Imperial Reserve. The Imperial Reserve, a large wilderness area, mostly woodland, had been set aside for Emperor Uriel Septim VII for his game hunting, but was rarely if ever used for this purpose. Its few tracks and scattered hunting lodges were maintained by Imperial Verders, who also served to root out the fugitives from justice who sometimes tried to lie low in the wilderness.
At the remote farmstead of Weatherleah, some two days ride south of the nearest major township, Chorrol, a lone Breton man tilled the land. His face was covered in the earth, bringing out the brightness of green in his eyes even more than usual; and his bare limbs ached from toil, and his hands sore from gripping the hoe, mattock, rake, pitchfork, and scythe. But he loved this life, far away from the hustle and bustle of civilisation, which he hated so much, and most importantly, it was an escape from the past. Here the past no longer mattered. Here he was free. Here he was king.
An indistinguishable form lumbered through the bushes, watching the lone figure of the farmer. The farmer, Albert Jemane, didn't notice. He had been tilling the land since the break of dawn over the Imperial Reserve, and his mind was focused hard on the land, and nothing else.
A smell drifted through the open country air, from the open wooden door and shutters of the domicile and into the allotment Albert Jemane was working in. It was his wife's cooking, and a welcome experience indeed. His wife was an excellent cook. He didn't know what he would do without her; when she agreed to move out into the wilderness with him she had inadvertently turned him from a life of crime and made an honest family man of him, although she didn't know it. But the past didn't matter anymore. Out there it could be forgotten.
Albert put down his tools and drew some fresh water up from the well, and made his way over to the pretty three-floored thatched house he called home. He threw some water over his face and hair, washing the dirt away ready for his meal, exposing his light brown hair with blonde strips, almost silvery in colour; a clue as to his mixed Imperial and Elvish ancestry.
His mouth watered at the anticipation of the meal: what would it be? He envisioned his favourite: piping hot potato and leek soup with freshly baked bread, and a side order of roasted pumpkin seeds. Perhaps some pumpkin insides cooked with cinnamon and cloves. As Albert excitedly entered the humble hall, he couldn't hear the twin boys playing in the main room. Strange, he thought. They were usually so loud and could be heard from the entrance. Even at such a young age, his boys argued a lot, perhaps because they had no other children to play with. Maybe his wife had already given them their dinner, he wondered. Good. That would keep them quiet for a short while and he could eat his own dinner in peace, and enjoy half an hours respite from his toils perhaps almost entirely without them squabbling in his ear.
As he entered the main room, Albert dropped his flagon of water, which smashed to pieces, and he almost gave out a scream at the sight before him. His wife and twins boys were huddled in the corner together, quietly sobbing, and with looks of abject terror in their faces. All except little Guilbert, it seemed, who was even beyond terrified – the little boy seemed too scared and too much in shock to even cry.
A bulky, hulking figure towered over them, and although its back was turned to Albert, he instantly recognised it as an ogre from his brief flirtation with the Fighter's Guild in his earlier years. Its head was vaguely the same size of a man's head, but completely without hair and the leathery skin was an almost lifeless pallid grey. The limbs of the hulking figure were so dense and muscular they were each nearly the full girth of a man's torso. The hands of the creature were larger than a man's head, with a deadly strength capable of crushing rocks, and could crush a man's head into paste with a single vice-like grip. It must have entered the house through the open door after smelling the meals, but as Albert knew, it wouldn't be interested in soup. Only meat. Raw, bloody meat.
The ogre was edging towards the cowering figures, with a painful slowness. It grunted to itself contently, for this would be an easy meal indeed. With a single sweep of those terrifying arms it swept the table and the steaming meals that had been laid out on them, tensed its immense leg muscles and pounced forward with a terrifying agility. Both of the boys screamed in unison whilst their mother received a direct blow to the chest. She spurted blood; no doubt some ribs had been broken, perhaps other internal damage. The thought of escaping her two sons away to safety kept her mind alert, though, and through the pain she remained conscious. She tried to get up and run with the boys, but moving was too painful and she fell back down into the sitting position. Upon his prey in a second, the ogre reached down to crush their skulls and finish them off. Blood splattered across the wooden supports and across the stone floor.
The ogre's body slumped to the ground, lifeless; its skull had been completely crushed by a blow from a formidable iron warhammer from behind. It was Albert's warhammer that he had kept hidden in the event that the authorities ever caught up with him at Weatherleah over past deeds; or indeed even from the Thieves Guild, which he had betrayed years earlier. Now that warhammer, which had remained unused as life at Weatherleah, continued on uneventful and the past didn't catch up with him, but that warhammer had existed as a reassurance for the former professional thief, albeit hidden from his wife.
His wife grimaced through the pain in her chest, with a look of surprise and wonder mixed in with the pained expression. "Where did you get that? Why do have such a weapon?"
"No time to explain dearest. We have to get moving. Let me help you up."
Albert reached down to help his wife up. She managed to get to her feet with the help of her husband, and even a little support from her two little boys, but she couldn't help let out a cry of pain as it overwhelmed her. "I don't want to leave, Albert. The ogre is dead. This is my home", she gasped.
"Dearest, I have some experience of ogres; I can tell this breed is a grounding, bred for raiding parties. They never hunt alone. More will come. Let's go."
They were a sorry sight, these four figures, shuffling slowly through the bloodied room, all attempting to support the injured female figure in the centre. But there wasn't even a look back at the interior of the house. Even the boys could sense the desperation in their father's voice, and moved with as much haste as possible. They stopped dead in their tracks at the door. Several ogres stood around Weatherleah in a circular formation, grunting hungrily and looking on ravenously with their small, night-black, soulless eyes. Albert, his wife, and little Reynald all momentarily gave out a yelp of terror. There were tears even in Albert's eyes now. Yet still little Guilbert remained still and quiet.
In that moment, Albert Jemane's heart truly sank. He knew his chances of survival, and more importantly that of his family, were extremely slight. It was simple mathematical odds, and Albert had learned much about that during his years of sneaking into the guarded manors of noblemen to pilfer their goods. To attempt to fight the ogres was futile. If they were to survive at all, then one of them, or some of them, would die. Not all of them would escape alive, for it was impossible. Better two of them die then all four them die.
Albert turned, kissed his wife quickly, and told her to run to the west. It was a cold action, but he could think of nothing else. He picked up one of the boys, Guilbert, and ran to the east with all his strength. He didn't even look back. His legs pained, the iron warhammer and the child in his arms weighing him down, but he ran as his life depended on it. Within ten seconds he was disappearing into the greenery.
At last Guilbert broke, with a single tear rolling down his face. He watched the scene briefly unfold over his father's shoulder. The ogres were encircling his mother and brother, and two of them turned to the direction of where Albert was running to with Guilbert in his arms. The largest of the ogres, who was crudely clad in bloody torn furs and was wearing the iron greaves of the imperial legion (no doubt taken from the corpse of a guardsman it had killed) beckoned the two ogres back to the group who had given chase with a grunt and a waving of its arm. It was clearly the leader or chief of these ogres. Before the bushes and trees covered Guilbert's face and obscured his view of the scene, the young boy made eye contact with this ogre chief. It had a large fresh scar down one half of its face, and one of its eyes had been gauged out. With its other eye it spied Guilbert, and grinned, unnaturally and with a vile satisfaction. His ogres didn't need to give chase after Albert and his son and therefore expend more energy then necessary; they already had their meal.
The two-second-long expression on the face of that ogre was something that Guilbert would never forget, and something that would haunt his nights for two decades. Nor would he forget that he was alive at the expense of the lives of his mother and twin brother, something which he would gladly have swapped his own for. And he would never forgive his father for making that decision for him.