Chapter 2. Riverwood
The sun was setting as they finally neared Riverwood. The sight was astounding. The snowy mountaintops reflected the spectrum of pinks and purples of the sky and it seemed like a dreamscape. They passed a waterfall and at the other side of the river, they actually saw a doe and her young drinking! Milly had never seen a doe before in her life and the sight of them was almost as if seeing some sort of mythical creature doing something very mundane, as opposed to the terrifying dragon of before. Ralof wasn't so impressed by the animals, but they must be a common sight for him.
The downside to the late hour was that together with the sun, the temperature was dropping. It had been cold before in the ragged clothes they wore, but now it was positively freezing. Ralof had given his blue cloak to Milly to wear, as his clothes were warmer and she was shivering. She was so exhausted, she couldn't even summon the magicka to conjure some flames to keep warm.
After the long and wearing day, the view of the small village was most welcome. The houses were built on the east bank of the river and upon a small isle in the river was a large open building, the wood mill owned by Ralof's sister. It lay deserted now, the water wheel turning idly in the stream.
And the Daedra be blessed that Ralof had family here. They could only salvage a little bit of money from fallen soldiers, and that amount would not be enough to provide all three of them with a warm meal and a bed at an inn.
Most of the villagers were inside now, having dinner, if the smell of food gave anything away. The few stragglers that were still out on the street shot the three of them a rather curious look and huddled together to whisper.
"My sister's house is at the edge of the village," Ralof said as he turned right at a traders shop, "I hope she made a big pot of stew."
The house they were heading to was one of the biggest in the village. A stick fence surrounded a garden were an ox and a few chicken walked around. The ox lifted his head and looked them lazily while chewing, but decided the grass was far more interesting than the newcomers. At the left side of the garden was a vegetable patch and behind the house was a small orchard of apple trees.
Ralof knocked on the door and a tall lady opened. Her hair and eyes were the same colour as Ralof's, and it was easy to see this was his elder sister. Then again, all the Nords she had seen so far all looked alike to Milly.
"Ralof!" she said, surprised to see him. "Come on in, quickly, the fire is lit."
Inside it was warm. Milly and her father remained at the door. The house looked comfortable, there were animal pelts on the floor and wall for isolation and the fire burnt happily. Above it was a large pot with something that smelled like stew and made their mouths water. At the table sat a big man with an impressive moustache and a small boy that jumped from his place at the fire and danced around Ralof.
"If I had to judge by your looks and what has happened here today, I guess you have a lot to tell us," the woman said.
"You can say that again," Ralof replied. "I'd like you to meet my friends, Holger and his daughter Milly."
"Pleased," the woman said, shaking their hands. "I am Gerdur, and these are my husband Hod and my son Frodnar." Addressing the jumping boy, she added, "Frodnar, not now. Your uncle is hungry. You can ask for stories later."
As they sat down at the table, Gerdur took three bowls and filled them with leftover stew. Gratefully, they accepted the bowls and ate without restraint. The stew tasted better than anything Milly had eaten before. There were apples, leeks, and cabbage beside some goat and foreign spices that beguiled their taste buds. That, and there was the fact that hunger made the best cook.
Hod and Gerdur turned serious as they all finished two bowls.
"It's clear something is going on," Gerdur spoke. "You three all look like you've nearly escaped death, and had to do so while fighting. We saw a dragon this afternoon. Did something happen? What of Ulfric? What of the Rebellion?"
"You know we were on a mission to go to Cyrodiil to see if anyone in the northern province liked to join our cause," Ralof elaborated after a pause, deciding where best to start. "When we were in the border mountains, scouts returned and told us it was no go. The cities were too much guarded, so we thought it would be best to turn around and go back to Windhelm." He shifted his look. "It was there that we met Holger and Milly. At first we thought they might be spies, but it was clear they were refugees. We made an allegiance with them, one for mutual protection until we were over the mountains and back in Skyrim. Well, it wasn't much later when we ran into Imperial soldiers."
Milly could remember pretty well how she had met the Stormcloaks. She and her father had been on the run for three days since the bandits raided their carriage. They were to the north of Bruma and were trying to find the Pale Pass that would bring them to Skyrim. Their progress was slow, as they tried to avoid the main road. The mountains here were steep and it was difficult to navigate around sudden ravines and vertical mountain walls. At least they were grateful it hadn't been snowing.
They had been living mostly on fruits and stale bread that they had come upon in an apple orchard, and they were lucky enough to find an unattended basked of bread. They didn't have the time to make traps and linger around trying to catch animals, and they had no hunting weapons. Sure, Milly knew some destructive spells, but she did not dare to use them lest she set the wood on fire or anyone would detect them. Overall, she wasn't confident enough in her skills to actually use them. So far they had been lucky and could hide themselves for the occasional wolves and they could only hope against hope they could continue to hide from them.
On the evening of that third day, that hope came to an end. They were fatigued and their vigilance had to pay the price for it. The mountains had reached to some sort of plateau at this point, but high pine trees made it dark. The atmosphere was tense, as if something was about to happen. They proceeded with the utmost care, but after a short while of looking around in paranoia, men in blue cloaks emerged from the trees. There must be at least twenty of them, all of them with bows pointing at them.
A tall man with blond, braided hair stepped forward. There was some sort of innate arrogance in his air that told them this was the leader of the gang.
His voice fitted his appearance. "State your business," he spoke in a stern voice. "I need to notice that we have you surrounded, with more arrows pointing your way than you might think. Put down your weapons and hold your hands where we can see them."
Scared and petrified, Milly immediately raised her hands. This man looked like he meant real business and the sword on his side didn't quite seem like a toy.
"We have no weapons," her father replied slowly. "We do not mean any harm."
From the side, four soldiers put their bows back and stepped up to them. Not quite gently, they took them by the arms, forcing them upright with their arms outstretched. Their grip was firm, and Milly felt her skin bruising beneath their fingers. They pulled so hard it felt like they were at a tug-of-war with her arms.
Her heart raced in her chest, and seemed loud like a drum in the pressing silence. Terrified, Milly stared at the face of her leader. He was a Nord like everyone else, a man in his prime, close to age with her father. His expression was horrifying, filled with hatred, and it bled through in his voice.
"Ralof, see if they are telling the truth. They might be hiding some weapons," he spoke.
The soldier that was Ralof stepped from beside his leader. His face was kinder and he wasn't rough as he searched her father.
"He's clean," he said and as he turned to look at her, her father started to struggle.
"You're not going to lay a hand on her," he said, trying with all his strength. "If we would have a weapon, it would be me who was carrying it, not her."
"If we can no touch her, she's going to have to undress and show she carries nothing she is," one of the men holding her replied in a slurred voice.
"Dad, it's fine," Milly said, almost pleading. She was scared for her father, that the soldiers would do him any harm if he struggled further.
The soldier Ralof had a calming air around him. "Don't be scared," he said. Point was, she was just that. Scared for what might happen, scared for her father, for herself, if the man was going to touch her, and scared what might happen afterwards.
The man made eye contact, and something in his air soothed her. This man didn't seem to be too bad, and as least he was gentle in his action.
And yes, he did touch her to see if she had anything hidden, but it was fast and over before it began. She was only dimly aware of some of the men to the side wolf-whistling, calling obscene things.
"They are clean," the man spoke calmly. "Release them," he added, and the men that hold their arms let go of them. "I'm sorry, lass," he said to her, his face earnest. "And my apologies to you, sir," he said as her father walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
"State your business here," the leader questioned again, not one bit kinder than before.
Father wondered for a moment. Would it be smart to tell all that had happened to a group of strangers? Sure, the strangers had weapon, and didn't quite seem like Imperial soldiers, but one could never know. Holger made it sound like they were on the run from a great injustice, no matter the source.
"So, we planned to make it to Skyrim," he concluded. "From there were thought to maybe continue onwards to Morrowind."
"You are fleeing from the Imperial Provence. Am I correct in assuming the people you are running away from are also Imperial?" the leader asked.
Well, they couldn't really answer to the negative now. And moreover, these people were Nords. Weren't the Nords in war against the Imperial Empire?
"No one blames you for disagreeing with the Imperials," the leader agreed. He turned away to discuss their fates with his men. The moments seemed to endure forever. It was their life on the line, after all. If the men decided to kill them, there wasn't much they could do against them, magic or not.
Finally, the leader turned back to them. Still, his face was stern. Did this man ever laugh?
"Alright, you are allowed to go," he decided.
"They are against the Imperials, right?" Ralof said, referring to his leader. "He looks like he can handle a blade. Have you served your time?"
"I was first lieutenant in Soltsheim, Holger Greenthorn," father replied. "And it is true, I can handle a blade rather well."
"My Jarl," Ralof said to the leader. "I think we can come to some mutual benefit here. We are rather short of soldiers after our misadventures at the border. Let them travel with us until we are back over the mountains. He fights for us, and we guard them in turn. They can go when are over the mountains."
"We were about to settle down for camp," the leader said, giving a wearied sigh. "He can show us his abilities, and, if he's any good, they can travel with us."
"That seems fair," father replied.
The rest of the evening, they made camp. The soldiers had hunted hares, actual hares to eat! Milly helped cook the stew while her father proved his abilities. The soldiers, Stormcloaks as they called themselves, seemed impressed with him.
The evening was a rather pleasant one. It raised their spirits to have a full stomach, to have company besides just each other. A woman brought a lute, and they were singing songs, and before long, Milly was sleeping, wrapped in a warm fur blanket.
Just after midnight, the camp was raided. The soldiers that were on the lookout cried out. Those that were sleeping jumped up, but it was hard to orientate. There was commotion everywhere, soldiers screaming, the flashes of swords in the fire. The objective seemed to be to take them captive, not to kill. Most of Stormcloaks thought that a fate worse than death, and fought with everything they had. Left and right, was the sound of metal on metal, of arrows whipping through the air.
There was nothing Milly could do. Fear took her as soldiers fell, as the mossy earth turned red, as people screamed with pain of injuries beyond healing. Milly stayed to the side, then slipped over a root. She fell down and hit her head on the mossy rocks. Her vision turned black, and the world disappeared.
And when she woke up, she was bound and in a carriage, taken off to Helgen.
"We saw the dragon flying over the Barrow, to the North," Gerdur confirmed as Holger and Ralof finished their story.
Apparently, the village had been in quite an uproar when a few villagers spotted the dragon flying overhead. Of those whom hadn't seen the dragon, half were jealous they hadn't seen it, and the other half were in disbelief. A dragon, near their village? Notwithstanding how far-fetched that sounded, there was no trail of fire and destruction. If there had been a dragon, surely it must have killed, wouldn't it? The fact that there was no such trail meant there could not have been a dragon.
"The Jarl of Whiterun needs to be told about this," Hod remarked. "For all we know, Riverwood or Whiterun itself could be in danger of another attack. We don't know where the dragon came from, or what its purpose was, after all."
Holger remained silent. He had dreamt about dragons for as long as he could remember. He didn't know if there were different kind of dragons, different colours, different sizes, different wings. What startled him most was that the dragon at Helgen was an exact copy of the dragon in his dreams. He knew that for certain, for he had dreamt so long of the dragon it was most familiar to him. Did it mean something that the dragon had appeared the exact moment his head was about to be chopped off?
He had really thought to die that moment – he had felt that his wife was there, in a blink of an eye, just beyond his touch. Then the dragon landed on that tower and the vision was torn away again.
It wasn't like he wasn't grateful. He liked to live and the thought that he dragged his daughter to her end was more than he could carry, the very daughter that was now sleeping with her head on her arms. Yet, it also felt like losing his wife for a second time.
"I'll go to Whiterun," he said resolutely. "I'll inform the Jarl of the danger. There might be someone there who can tell more about the dragons, an archivist or the likes. I want to know more about them."
Ralof nodded. "I'll go with you to Whiterun. It's on the way to Windhelm. Ulfric must still be alive - he must be - and I'm sure he's on his own way to Windhelm." For a moment, there was a flash of doubt in the man eyes, doubt if his leader had escaped Helgen. Holger wanted to say something about the cave in, that no one knew what could have happened behind the fallen boulders, but he kept his tongue. He didn't want to trouble the young man.
"I've been thinking about that too," Holger replied instead. "Even if I lived the last 25 years in Mournhold, before that I traveled all of Tamriel. I knew about what happened here, what happened with the Thalmor and the White-Gold Concordat."
He had been in the Great War, he knew of the dangers of the Thalmor. Luckily the Thalmor never had any true power in Morrowind, or in Solstheim, and he never had to fight in any of the big battles near the Imperial City. However, the war made him despise the Thalmor. He had never really been religious, but banning the worship of Talos was madness. A war fought because of a different faith were the most useless, in his opinion. Let anyone worship whatever Divine or Daedra he choose, or let them be free not to believe, as long as you don't force your beliefs on anyone else.
That said, he hated the Imperial forces too. The fact that the Thalmor were now in true charge in the Imperial City was practically a battle between two unwanted authorities. The Imperials had always been too quick to judge, too harsh in their ways, what was confirmed in his own meeting with them. Perhaps everything would have been better if there were still true Septims left on the throne.
Skyrim, however, was an interesting mixture of those forces, plus the forces of Ulfric Stormcloak. He might not agree to everything Ulfric had done, but out of the three forces, Ulfric Stormcloak was by far the least bad one. At least from what he knew about him.
"I know the current situation of Skyrim, even if I might not know the stories from every side. I do know that even if don't think everything Ulfric had done was smart, I am for a free Skyrim. Let the Nords reign in the matter they think is best for their country, without interference from any Imperial of the Thalmor. I think I want to join your Stormcloak Rebellion."
It was silent for a moment as he spoke these words.
"You will be most welcome," Ralof said after the observed the older man for a while. "You fight well. Your skill will be highly appreciated. Ulfric knows you now, and I feel you are to be trusted. I think he would welcome you with a warm heart. However," he began, looking to his side, to where his daughter was sleeping.
Holger didn't need telling what Ralof wanted to say. "Milly," he said. She looked so peaceful asleep, yet there was a frown on her face.
Hod rose from his chair. "No point in waking her up," he said. "We'd best put her in bed. Frodnar, you can sleep with us tonight."
Ignoring the fuss his son made, Hod carried Milly to a different room, putting her to bed. After a minute he returned.
"Milly can't go," Holger said resolutely. "A war is not a place for her. She'd be unhappy surrounded by tall tough men swinging axes, she'd wither." He sighed. "It feels foolish to have left Mournhold now. I think I need to send her back."
"There are lots of carriages moving between the big cities. I am assured you can put her safely on a carriage to Riften," Gerdur suggested. "From Riften there are lots of rides that will travel to Morrowind. One of them will certainly be able to carry her back to Mournhold."
"And these carriages are safe?" he asked.
"As safe as they can be, I think," she replied. "They are used by a great many people, so she would never be alone."
"I doubt they will be cheap," Holger remarked. "I'll find a way to get money when we're in Whiterun."
Ralof looked at him, sceptically. "I know it is not in my place to comment, but do you think she will go quietly?"
Holger sighed. "No, she won't. I'll have to force her," he snorted derisively. "Quite probably have to knock her down and throw her in a coach."
They should never have left Mournhold. Perhaps he might think differently if the border visa wasn't so astonishingly high and they would have actually made Skingrad and the Aleyid ruins. But the hard truth was, they didn't. They were in Skyrim, and Skyrim was at the verge of falling into a civil war. This was no place for a girl like Milly, so stubborn, so innocent, and so striving to do things just out of her reach.
It's only when you have two children that you realize how different two persons can be, he always understood. His eldest had always been the lady, always been one step ahead at embroidery, dancing, or being swooned by boys.
He always told stories when they were little of strange cultures and faraway places. Gwynneth took them as fairy tales, stories, but Milly took them as a truth, a mystery waiting for her to be solved. She was always playing with wooden swords with her friend, sneaking around and going on adventurous missions to retrieve the lost treasures of his stories, sometimes in the form of an ivory hairbrush, sometimes a silver spoon...
And finally, after his wife's death, when they lost their status of nobility, Milly insisted on going to the Arcane University that was now hosted in the old temple district of Mournhold. He didn't know why she always had an urge to prove herself. At least his eldest was safe, being married to a merchant and living a wealthy life in a safe city. A pang followed through his heart as he thought about Gwynneth. Since she was married, would she already be with child? Would he actually have to miss the birth of his first grandchild? And, was she really happy with that Breton man of hers? And most of all, why couldn't Milly have followed in her footsteps and be safe and married too?
But marriage... he could hardly imagine any man being able to swoon Milly. He didn't think she even had any experiences of being swooned, and the Daedra forbid, the thought of any man touching her almost made his blood boil. But still... If she was married like her sister, she would have been safe. And direly unhappy.
He sighed again and looked at Ralof. "Just do yourself a pleasure, mate, and never have any children. Or, be lucky and have boys. Daughters, especially stubborn daughters, are just too much of a fuss to handle."
AN: This was once one chapter together with the next. I know about my tendency to write huge chapters, so I decided to post them as two chapters instead. Enjoy!
This has been beta'd and improved by Verpine. Thank you!