In case you find an unfamiliar word, it's probably a specific word from the Elder Scrolls lore, from the game Skyrim. You just need to google it to get a better understanding of it.
A guard came before dawn and escorted her to a covered carriage just outside the city wall. The ground creaked beneath her boots, covered in a thin layer of frost. The air was cold and the sky was clear, and she could already see the grey light that came before sunrise, peeking from the mountains in the east. She smiled at the thought of the land of the Dark Elves being the first to see the light, in Morrowind.
"Do you know what matters the King has to take care of in Windhelm?" she asked the guard.
He shrugged his shoulders. "No. The High King and his steward take care of things. We just guard the city for dragons."
"Didn't the Dragonborn take care of them, months ago?"
Another shrug, but this time no answer.
Then the city doors opened, and a large group of heavily armed Stormcloak soldiers came through. Among them, in the center of the group, walked King Richard, dressed in fine traveling clothes, as it is suitable for a king. They stopped and let him move the the carriage, before about two thirds of the escort turned around and walked back inside Solitude. The rest fetched horses from the nearby stables and got ready to protect their King. And his guest.
"I hope you found your accommodations suitable," he stated.
Beckett nodded. "Yes, Your Highness."
He gave her a quick nod, before opening the door of the coach. "Splendid. Jump in, we have a long road ahead of us and I don't want to waste time."
A bit awkward because of the cuffs around her wrists, she jumped on the coach and took a seat on the opposite side. King Richard soon followed her and shut the door behind him. He punched the wall on the side of wagoner and signalled they were ready, then sat on the other side. He pulled the curtain so he could see outside.
"I took the liberty to pack a few things for you, Lady Beckett. I hope you won't find it too intrusive."
"Please, Your Highness, I'm hardly a lady, there's no need to call me that way. And no, I don't find it too intrusive, I actually appreciate the effort."
Another quick nod. "How do you wish to be addressed?"
"My men called me Beckett. It's more than enough for me," she explained.
"Good to know. And you can quit the Your Highness thing too."
Beckett gave him a strange look. "I find it a little odd, it's your title after all. A title you fought for."
He shook his head. "Not exactly. I've never been one to keep up with old customs, when it came to addressing people. Those closer to me usually skipped the ranks and called me by first name."
"It's not like I'm one of your closest advisors though," she said. "I'm your prisoner."
"You're my guest. Those cuffs are only to keep up appearances." He pulled a key from a pocket, then leaned closer and unlocked the metal shackles. "There you go."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're a strange man?" she asked, as she rubbed her aching wrists.
The Kin chuckled. "You'll meet Galmar soon enough."
They talked a lot, during the trip. Solitude and Windhelm were at opposite sides of Skyrim, so they were facing a long journey and needed to keep themselves entertained. While the guards outside did their job silently, the atmosphere inside the coach was animated and jovial. They usually stopped in villages or cities for the night, spending the evenings drinking ale and mead at the local inns and exchanging tales with the inhabitants, but rarely the King and his guest stopped talking, while awake.
Subjects changed often, from war to history to legends and sometimes themselves and their story. Beckett learned a lot about the King, and despite her usual need to keep per private things private, she confided him many events of her life that had shaped her and made her become the chief of a bandit group that had created enough havoc in the hold that only the toughest Khajiit caravans attempted to trade with Solitude for months. That left the city supplies and stock nearly empty, by the time the Dragonborn managed to locate their base of operation and strike them down, capturing them.
She learned that the King was a what people called a True Nord, a man used to survive, more than live, in a nation that had the harshest environment and the hardest lands to plow. She wasn't aware of the fact that before becoming the Empire most wanted rebel, he had been a loyal soldier of the Legion. That, until the Thalmor seized him and tortured him for the Nines only know how long. As a Nord, he was a proud man, he took pride of his ancestors and in his faith in the Nine Divines. Only when the White Gold Concordat forced all the lands of Tamriel to submit to the Altmer xenophobic faction, the Thalmor, and the worship of Talos became illegal and punishable with death, he turned against the Empire.
And before the return of Alduin the World Eater and all his fellow dragons, his intention was to reclaim Skyrim through diplomacy. The dragons and the destruction they brought forced him to move against the Empire and the Thalmor. The fact that the Dragonborn, though Breton, had decided to side with him and help him through the Liberation of Skyrim, well, that had only helped him strengthen his grasp on the land, seizing Hold after Hold, to the point he could conquer Solitude.
"What happened to the Jarls?" asked Beckett.
"They stayed in Solitude, with Elisif for a while. After the Moot, after I was elected, I let them return to their Holds. They're not Jarls anymore, but they were granted the roles of Thanes."
"So they're technically still royalty."
He nodded. "They were never stripped of their titles, that was never my intention. I hoped they would see reason and side with me, but apparently the fear of retaliation was greater than their faith in the Nines. What about you? Why didn't you go and ask the Jarl's help, after the elves raided your home?"
"I did. The Jarl my father served had been deposed, his young and easily manipulated nephew had been appointed successor. He ordered the attack. I was nearly killed on sight when I tried to approach the city."
Castle sighed. "You know, the Dragonborn liberated Falkreath right after Whiterun, reinstating the old Jarl there. You could have gone back, you could have taken back your place."
"I had already been appointed chief of the band. We were doing fine. I saw no reason to go back and maybe find a situation that was worse than what I had left. I was fine with my small band of scoundrels."
He laughed. "Small band of scoundrels? You terrorized a whole hold! May Sheogorath curse me, it took my best men months to find you!"
"But as you said, we never killed anyone. We stole from trading caravans and pillaged farms, but left everyone unscathed. And we actually did some honest work too. Where the Companions were too expensive or the guards too worried about dragons, we dealt with brigands, murderers and other nasty things like ghosts and zombies. All for some supplies, a help with the weapons and a bowl of warm soup."
"I wasn't aware of that."
She shrugged. "We had a reputation to keep up. We had to appear as fearless, ruthless bandits, not the saviors of the poor."
"But if it could be proved and sustained with witnesses, that would surely help you and your mates shorten your sentences."
"You didn't send them to the gallows, or have them beheaded. I think they'll be fine with whatever hard labor you chose for them," she joked.
"What about you?" he asked. "You've been in a cell for two months. And now you are forced to bear the whims of a bitter man that reluctantly accepted the High Throne of Skyrim."
"I wouldn't describe you as bitter. Grumpy, maybe. But not bitter. A bitter man would have killed me and showed my head on a pike, as an example. You kept me alive, well fed, warm and entertained. By the way, I never had the chance to thank you for the books."
"My pleasure. And speaking of books, I was thinking about write down what has happened in the past few years and the events of the Civil War, and you seem one better educated in these matters, would you mind helping me out with that?"
Before she could answer, the carriage came to an abrupt stop. Suddenly, both Beckett and the King felt the coach shake, and his hand went straight to the hilt of sword. "Stay here," he ordered, and opened the door.
"Like hell!" she replied, following him outside. They weren't too far from Windhelm at that point, they were still in the Whiterun hold, where they had spent a couple of days restocking their supplies and allowing the guards and the horses to rest, close to the border with the Eastmarch. That part of Skyrim, a land still in turmoil as it recovered from the Civil War, was supposed to be safe or so they had been told, but nevertheless, they were under attack.
A large group of bandits was shooting arrows at them. Two guards of the convoy had already fallen from their horses and lay, probably dead, on the muddy ground.
Grunting, Castle unsheathed his weapon. "Get back inside," he growled.
"With all the due respect, I repeat: like hell. Permission to gather a weapon?"
"Granted!" he yelled, before he took a deep breath and used his Thu'um to push a couple of bandits away before he launched towards them and pushed the tip of his sword in their chest. Blood spurted from the wounds when he extracted his sword, staining his clothes.
Behind him, Beckett had taken a sword and a shield from a fallen Stormcloak and ran beside King Richard, ready to protect him. She caught a couple of arrows on the wooden shield, the tip of one pierced the barrier and stung her forearm. Not that she cared much.
A bandit with a warhammer charged her and exploiting his slowed down movements to dodge the blow and stick the sword between his ribs. The makeshift armor left them exposed and a skilled fighter like her needed less than that to get rid of an opponent.
Fighting back to back, the High King and the former bandit chief managed to fell most of the assailants, while all the men and women of the escort party were killed. "So much for well trained soldier, Your Highness…" screamed Beckett deflecting an axe blow and then slitting the throat of a woman.
"I'll kick Galmar's ass for this. They were supposed to handle this! FUS RO DAH!"
Glancing behind her shoulders, as she heard his Thu'um she saw three bandits fly backwards. One of them hit a rock and his skull split with a disgusting cracking of bones and squish of brain matter on a sharp ridge. The other two landed in the mud, but Castle reached them fast enough to pin them there with his sword.
Beckett turned around and noticed some movement on a rock not fifteen yards away, behind Castle. One last bandit was arming his bow, aiming at the King.
With a sprint she didn't believe possible with that kind of boots in that muddy soil, she managed to put herself between the archer and the King. The arrow hit her shield with a loud thud, breaking the wood and sticking in her flesh. She whimpered, but didn't allow the archer to know he had hurt her. Instead, she looked down and saw that one of the bandits Castle had killed had a small dagger at his waist. She picked it and with a swift motion, she launched it up and grasped it mid-air by the tip. A split second later, the dagger pierced the archer's throat. Blood spilled from his mouth and he fell from the rock, landing ten feet below.
The King and Beckett looked at each other, heaving for the effort. "What the fuck?" he grunted. "All my men are dead!"
"Yeah, that happens quite often when they're outnumbered three to one," replied Beckett, breaking the tail of the arrow that stuck in her forearm and pulling the rest of it out on the other side. She let the shield go then and proceeded to examine the wound.
"Everything alright?" asked Castle, noticing the blood.
She shrugged. "I've had worse. Through and through, no signs of damage…" she said moving her fingers. "Except for the wound itself. I'll be fine, I just need to cauterize and bandage it. It will heal just fine."
He nodded. "Everything you need should be packed beneath the wagoner's seat. I'll look for it."
"Right. Then what do we do?"
Castle stopped and looked around. "We're closer to Windhelm than Whiterun. Going back is futile and there's a storm approaching. If I'm not mistaken there's an old miner's cottage not half a day from here, right after the March's border, it's abandoned but it still stands. It's used by travelers when in need."
"Alright, let's gather what we can and get there as soon as we can. The wind is getting too chilly for my tastes."
And I fear this is getting bigger than expected.