2
After a few minutes of walking uphill in the cold wind, the fort appeared in front of me. Like all of the Imperial Guard forts in Vvardenfell, it was basically a large square with one main gate and a tower on each corner. Large fir trees flanked it on each side and spread out into the forest beyond, white snow laying heavily on their branches.
A few guards along the top of the wall glanced down at me as I approached the gate, but they paid me little mind, so I just went through the large archway without asking permission. The open courtyard looked pretty bleak, with a few guards meandering around, a broken cart along one of the walls, and some empty crates stacked in a corner. It was hardly a welcoming sight.
There were three buildings within the main wall, one on each other side of the fort, and each of them three stories tall. Since all forts are designed the same way, I knew that they were the command office, the guard quarters and armory, and the Imperial Cult offices, although I didn't know which one was which. I felt strange just walking uninvited into a building, so I approached one of the guards standing around.
"Excuse me," I said.
"Who are you? Did you come on the supply boat?" he asked immediately.
"Yes," I said.
"Did they have anything to drink? Flin? Brandy? Anything?"
The question seemed out of place, but I remembered that the guards on the dock had asked the ship captain the same thing. "I don't think so," I said.
The guard swore and shook his head. He looked away and seemed content to ignore me, so I walked in front of him and said, "I need somewhere to stay. Who do I talk to?"
"Captain Carius," the guard said with a sigh, pointing over his shoulder. "You have to sign in with him."
"Thank you," I said curtly, and walked off.
Imperial Legion soldiers were not known to be the most friendly or the most hospitable bunch of men in Tamriel, but my icy reception here was beginning to bother me. At the very least, I expected the men here to be more helpful merely because I was female, and there were rarely any women stationed at forts like this. Especially one so far from the mainland. The men here probably had not seen a woman for weeks, but so far they seemed annoyed to even have to look at me.
I opened up the door to the command office, the building the guard had pointed at, and walked inside to feel a wonderful rush of warm air greet me. I shivered uncontrollably for a moment and then immediately felt better. I flexed my fingers and stamped by cold feet on the hard floor, glad to be in a warm building again.
This time I didn't bother to ask directions. The Captain's office was always on the top floor of the office building, so I went to the stairway and started going up. When I reached the third floor, I walked down the hall, passing two sour-looking guards who glared at me but said nothing, and approached a door at the end of the hall with a gold-plated Captain's emblem on it.
I knocked politely and heard a voice from inside inviting me in. I pushed the heavy door open and found myself in a sparsely-decorated office that was far too large for the amount of furniture inside it. There was a small, well-worn desk and a few chairs, and some oil lamps sitting atop crates instead of tables. The curtains on the walls were brown or red with the Imperial Legion sign, but there were no other decorations.
A man came out of an adjacent room, fussing with the collar of his shirt underneath his elaborate golden armor. He looked up to say something and then stopped suddenly, looking at me curiously.
"Oh, I thought you were someone else," he said with a smile, walking over to his small desk. He was middle-aged, perhaps as old as 35 or so, and had strong, handsome features with very expressive eyes. His dark hair was combed straight back and tied into a short ponytail. Like all Imperial Captains were expected to wear, he had on a decorative golden breastplate and shoulder pads over a red shirt and dark black pants.
He took a seat and gestured for me to do the same. "You must be new here. I've never seen you before."
"Yes," I said, sitting down on one of the chairs. "I came over on your supply boat. I'm trying to get to Skyrim."
The man laughed shortly. "Oh, well you're in trouble then. We don't have any ships to Skyrim at all."
I stared at him in shock, my mouth agape. "What?" I managed to stutter.
He flashed an awkward grin at me and shrugged, setting his elbows on his desk. "Right now the only regular ships that come here are from Khuul in Vvardenfell. I assume that's where you came from?"
"Yes."
"The only way to get to Skyrim from here is to go back to Khuul and take a ship from there. Unless you want to swim the whole way, but I don't recommend that. Of course, I'm sure the captain of the supply ship told you they only come here once a week, so it looks like you're stuck."
I slouched in the chair and let my arms hang at my sides. "I don't believe it. I was sure there would be passage to Skyrim from here."
"Sorry to disappoint you. We don't do any trade with Skyrim, and we get all our supplies from Morrowind, of course. Even the Nord tribes north of here don't travel back and forth to Skyrim, the trip is too far for them."
When I remained speechless, the man extended his hand. "My name is Falx Carius, by the way. I'm the Captain here at Fort Frostmoth. You haven't told me your name."
"Sasha," I said.
"You're a Nord, I take it?"
I nodded, and then I realized I would have to think quickly. "I grew up in Cyrodiil though, in a village near the Morrowind border."
Carius leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. "And what in the world are you doing here, in this miserable little place?"
"It's a long story," I said. "I'm sick of Vvardenfell, so I wanted to go to Skyrim. The boat there from Khuul was too long to wait, so I thought I could come here and get passage. Guess I was wrong."
Carius nodded and flashed another smile. "Were you in a hurry to get out of Morrowind? You're not a fugitive from justice, are you?"
"Hardly," I said evenly, looking him right in the eye. "But I have almost nothing to my name. No money, no profession. I had no friends there and thought maybe I would find more sympathy among my own people."
"Sympathy is a hard thing to come by," Carius said. "You probably won't find much here, I'm afraid. My men are a foul-tempered bunch, as you may have noticed."
"I did notice."
"Being sent here is not a promotion," he explained. "It's more like a punishment. There's nothing to do here. No local villages, no entertainment, few supplies, drafty rooms, and no one likes it here at all. Most of the men are in a perpetual bad mood."
"Sounds wonderful," I muttered.
"Well," Carius said, "Since you're stuck here with the rest of us, I suppose I should figure out where you can stay. We have plenty of extra beds in the guards' quarters, since right now we're barely at half our full capacity."
"I have no money to pay for room and board."
Carius waved the comment away. "Don't worry, I'm sure we can find something for you to do to earn your keep." He got up and walked over to a crate in the corner of the office. He lifted the lid and took out a large book and some wrinkled sheets of paper, and then set them on his desk and sat back down.
It took him a few minutes to write up an official document stating that I had permission to stay at the fort. It was hardly an important matter, since he explained that none of the guards would care, and he doubted any auditors from the Legion would check on his records. But some of the men in the Imperial Cult were sticklers for regulations and would likely raise a commotion if I was staying there without the proper paperwork. He entered my name into the book as well, listing my gender, age, and where I had come from. And then he stamped the piece of paper with his personal seal and handed it to me.
"Thanks," I said, folding up the paper and sticking it into my bag.
"Just in case one of the Imperial Priests gets nosy, you can show them that and they'll leave you alone. I hear enough complaining from them as it is."
"And where do I stay? Do you have to assign me a bed?"
Carius grinned again and motioned toward the room adjacent his office. "You can spend some time in my bed, if you wish. I could use the company."
"I'm honored," I said sarcastically.
He shrugged and raised his hands innocently. "It was just a suggestion. You're the first pretty face I've seen in weeks," he said with a chuckle, although I could sense by his tone that he was not being entirely facetious. If I had agreed to his proposal, he would have probably taken me to bed right then and there.
"Surely I'm not the only woman here?" I asked. "That would be a bit awkward."
"No, there are a few other women here," Carius said. "A handful of the Imperial Cultists here are women, and one or two of the guards are as well. There's also a woman here who does some of the cooking, but she's an old hag. I think that's about it. But men outnumber women about twelve to one, so you can imagine how that might make some of the guards frustrated."
"Is everyone here really so miserable?" I asked.
Carius sighed and nodded reluctantly. "You'll find most of the soldiers here a very unpleasant bunch. Morale here at the fort is pretty low, for the obvious reasons. I wish there was something I could do about it, but this place is just not very hospitable. Nasty weather, nothing to do, and supplies are always running low. We get stale bread and old fruit, and they haven't seen fit to even send us some good wine in months now."
"That's the first thing your men asked when the ship started unloading, if we had any alcohol on board. There wasn't any."
"Like I said, being stationed at this fort is a punishment. Living here would certainly be easier if we had some good flin to drink. The closest thing we have is the mead the locals drink, but that stuff is just horrible. I don't know how they stand to drink the stuff."
"I thought there weren't any local villages."
"I say local because we share the island with them," Carius clarified. "They aren't close by. There are a couple of sparse Nord villages about twenty miles north of here, deep in the forest on the north side of the island, but they don't like visitors. We've traded with them a few times, but for the most part, they leave us alone and we leave them alone."
"Do you think I could go there?"
"You're welcome to try," Carius said with a hint of caution. "But there's no road through the forest, and the land is very treacherous up here. Lots of wolves and bears, but the cold is the worst enemy you have out there. I don't suggest trying to find those villages without a guide or you'll get lost and wind up freezing to death."
I doubted that Carius' warnings were quite as serious as they sounded. It was more likely he wanted me to stay at the fort in the hopes of getting me into his bed. But he did have a point; I didn't know the terrain and wasn't prepared for a long trek across open land, especially when it was so cold outside. In time I could easily relearn my survival skills and adapt to the cold, but it would take time. I had spent too long in a damp cell, and my body would need to adjust.
"Okay," I said. "Since I'll have to work here to pay for my bed, who should I talk to about that?"
"That depends. Do you have any useful skills?"
"Just staying alive, if you can call that a skill."
Carius laughed and was about to say something more when there was a knock on the door. He pursed his lips for a moment and leaned back in his chair, looking very disappointed.
"Come in," he said, and the door opened to reveal a sly-looking man with slicked back hair and an ornate purple jacket that signified him as a member of the East Empire Company, the trading arm of the Empire. He had beady eyes and a sharp nose, with just a hint of a mustache. He strolled into the room and cast a disapproving glance at me.
"I didn't know you had company, my dear Falx," the man said, his voice smooth and slimy. "If you're busy, I will come back later."
"It's alright. She was just leaving," Carius said in a clipped tone. His voice was altogether different than the way he had spoken to me, and there was no longer a smile on his face. He looked at me and said, "Go to the kitchen at the guards' quarters and look for a man named Liman. He's the head cook, he'll set you up with a job."
"Okay," I said. "Thank you."
I got up and walked past the Company man on my way out, making a point not to look at him. His eyes followed me out of the room, and I could almost feel his gaze on my back as I closed the door behind me.
