Chapter 4: Season Unending

The marketplace smelt of fish and meat, and molten metal from a smelter in the corner by which the blacksmith and his assistant were working. Above the cacophony of haggling and merchants advertising their wares, the sound of hammer beating down on armour plates and the shrieking of a blade being sharpened could be heard. Faces of human men and women mingled with those they later found to be 'Dark Elves', or the 'Dunmer'. Their red eyes were set against contrasting grey skin, though with the pointed ears, elongated faces, and high cheekbones characteristic to even the elves on Thedas. However, where the elves on Thedas were generally considered beautiful for the delicacy of their appearance, the elves of Skyrim, especially the Dunmer, were fearsome-looking with their prominent brow arcs and the severe slant of their eyes They didn't seem fragile either, for a good many stood as tall as Hawke, who was himself a tall man, and some were built almost as strongly. For all of that, what was most intriguing, (especially to Fenris), was that the men of these elves—Dunmer, Bosmer, or Altmer—had facial hair; that they really could grow beards.

The racial discrimination, however, was a painfully familiar thing. It became obvious in the brief moment that they were in the city of Windhelm that there was a clear Dunmer-Nord divide. The Grey Quarter through which they traversed when they were trying to find the way to the marketplace was a network of narrow alleyways, lined with trash and hovels made of wood and leather scraps. The doors of the proper homes, if they could even be called that, were made of messes of wood that appeared to have been salvaged from broken parts from the docks. Most were barely on their hinges and the holes in them made them inadequate covers against the bitter winds. Human beggars squatted among their Dunmer brethren, warming their hands above fires lit in old cauldrons. Fenris almost unwrapped his sword from its leather cover when he saw a man, a Nord, drunk on either ale or mead, slurring insults at the Dunmer he passed, even going so far as to spit near the feet of one.

An Imperial guard came up behind him and put an end to any further show of hostilities, but it was really Hawke's hand on his shoulder that stopped Fenris from cutting the man down.

"Guard! I am a, hic, friend of the Drago… Drago... Dragon…born!" the man slurred as another Imperial guard came to persuade him to leave. "He… he… socked me in the face and everything!" He held his fists up, the other still gripping the neck of his bottle. "In a brawl! Hic. It's a Nord's way of… of… saying…"

Hawke, seeing the situation as well under control as it could be, jerked his head towards the end of the alleyway, and they started to leave.

"Yes…yes," the first Imperial guard was heard saying, leading the drunk man away. "I am sure our esteemed friend would be pleased to hear you threatening the elves in his favourite city. Now be off with you before we run you in for disrupting the peace." To the Dunmer, he added, "We will be on our way."

Thankfully, they found the marketplace shortly after—a lady, who was somewhere near her latter years, actually squawked at Fenris, pointing to the spikes of his armour that was not fully concealed by the cloak, "Watch yourself with that! You can poke someone's eye out!" and then went on her way, muttering about how she should pay some Captain Lonely-Gale another visit to complain about clothing regulations.

They came to stand before a stall that sold weapons, armour, and sundry, manned by a tall, spindly Altmer woman, whose facial features were set to reflect a level of superiority that would make the Dalish run for their history. Niranye, as she introduced herself, was right then inspecting an amulet Hawke had given her. Fenris recognised it to be the Arlathan Focusing Crystal that Hawke always had with him as surely as his family's signet ring.

Finally, she looked up, and said, "I can give you thirty septims for this."

"Thirty?!" cried Hawke, and Fenris drew his hood further down over his head, knowing the man was going to go on a haggling rampage from there.

"That is easily more than a hundred gold. It increases mana and mana regeneration, and it is not an item you can get anywhere here in Skyrim," Hawke argued.

Niranye held up the amulet and pointed at the red-orange crystal centrepiece. "Each scratch on this crystal can easily lower the value of the amulet by ten. As I have no way of finding out if the amulet's augmenting qualities even work, I dare say I am being generous."

"Transport out of Windhelm cost at least twenty septims from what I heard and that will take you five feet from the front gate!"

Niranye was undeterred. "Oh… do tell me all your problems. I enjoy listening to the troubles of others."

"Oh, I would love to," Hawke responded in kind. He leaned on the stall's countertop and said with his equally charming smile, "But that will be wasting your sweet, precious time. A beautiful woman like you must have places to be, lovers to be pleased by… so why don't you find some kindness in that equally beautiful heart of yours to help the poor people, huh?"

Niranye leaned forward in turn, bringing her face close to Hawke's. She lowered her lids, smiling as she took Hawke in, before she finally said, "You are lovely to look at… but…,"—leaning back she added briskly—"no. I don't haggle. If you want a higher price for substandard goods, go elsewhere."

Fenris never thought he saw the day when someone was able to resist Hawke's charm. If he was not feeling concerned for the man and their current situation, he would have smiled.

"Seventy-five septims," Hawke haggled anyway. "That crystal can be considered a relic. It has a name and everything."

"You must be mad. Thirty and not a septim more."

"Fifty septims, and I am making major loss from it. I had to fight a dragon too."

Niranye lifted an eyebrow, but there was something to be said about Hawke's power of persuasion. "Thirty-five is my best offer."

Hawke considered it, his eyes travelling to Fenris who stood a pace behind him, trying his best to be inconspicuous.

To Niranye, he said, "I will take thirty if you throw in a pair of boots equal to the remaining value when taken out of fifty."

"That is absurd."

"I am talking about the selling price here and not the buying one. You will still be paying what the amulet is worth and sell off a pair of boots while you're at it. You make a sale in the end."

Hawke kept his best smile up as Niranye considered his offer.

Finally, she gave in. "I will accept on those terms, but know that I am being generous."

"And I will be eternally grateful for that."

Hawke and Fenris both knew that Niranye was not going to give them a pair of boots that was worth twenty septims in selling price, and especially not in buying price.

Nonetheless the mage turned to Fenris when a pair was handed to him and asked that the elf try it. Fenris stared at Hawke, not responding at first. Then he glowered and hissed, "I do not need you to baby me, Hawke. I am fine without them."

"The cold will freeze your toes off, Fenris," urged Hawke gently, kneeling down as he spoke to fit Fenris into the pair.

"Hawke—"

"Oh, shut up, Fenris. When have you never taken anything from me? Besides, I like your toes."

The declaration shocked Fenris, and admittedly, hurt him. As Hawke slipped the boots on, made of stitched skins and lined for warmth, he tried to think of times when he had not depended on Hawke. There was plenty, surely. Before he met Hawke, he had been on his own and he had survived well enough on his own. But how? He had never earned an honest coin to his name, and when he did think he had during his time in Kirkwall, he remembered that most of it came from the split after the sale of loot, of which price Hawke would haggle over like a common fishwife in the slightly more unscrupulous sides of the Lowtown markets. Fenris was sure he owed Hawke more than twenty sovereigns in losses at Wicked Grace.

The thought made him guilty but rightfully angry as well.

He jerked his foot back just as Hawke started to tie the straps for him. "I am no child, Hawke."

"Admitting it is a good start," Hawke said, straightening up. "Where do you intent to go after that?"

Fenris only grunted in frustration and knelt down to tighten the straps of the boots himself. The boots were nothing much to look at, even Fenris who had no fashion sense whatsoever would admit to that. But they were of sturdy make, and lined with a fair bit of fur to keep the cold out. It was loose but the straps were sufficient in holding them to his feet, which felt immediately heavy and awkward after he had them on. The markings on his soles and the healing wound made his feet sensitive to the inner padding, but it was still better than treading on the uneven and icy stone floor of the city barefooted.

He looked over to Hawke who was in the process of counting the coins Niranye handed to him. Something sat on the tip of Fenris' tongue, wanting to be said, and yet not, curbed by the roiling sense of hurt and deficiency. Yet, Hawke appeared but a man then. Fenris was recalled to a time when Hawke was not a nobleman, living out of a hovel in Lowtown with his uncle, trying to earn enough coin to put food on his family table and pay for the Deep Road expedition. People who bumped him in the streets didn't know who he was and he was haggling, always haggling, doing hard work for less pay than the work deserved. To climb so high in the arduous period of near a decade, to finally have power after so long, only to give it all up… and for what?

Fenris looked about him, at the faces of human and mer, at the aged walls, and the empty sky. His stomach gave an embarrassing growl. They had not eaten all day.

"I heard there's a corner club in the Grey Quarter," Hawke said as he joined Fenris. "We could grab some food and try to start for Whiterun from here."

"Why Whiterun?" asked Fenris, slinking through the masses as he went, keeping an instinctive eye out for pickpockets.

"Plenty of farmland," Hawke replied. "I heard they are hiring hands there."

"The two of us?"

"Well, me, mainly. You should try to join the mercenary group that works out from that city. Also heard they could use another sword."

Fenris wanted to say that he could be a farmhand too, even if fighting with a sword was all he knew, but a guard went past him and said, "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll?" in such a condescending tone of voice that he forgot what it was he wanted to say. He glared at the man as hard as he could, while making sure to keep Hawke in sight while maneuvering through the crowd.

"Let's find this corner club and be done here," Fenris growled as he caught up with Hawke. "I've had enough of this place with its crowds and filth."

They ended up having to trek from Windhelm to get to Whiterun. Transport to the city cost twenty septims and the price of a single horse was a thousand: all money they didn't have. Between purchasing a map, food, and some supplies, they were left with naught but twelve septims between them. They were layering the clothes they had to keep out the cold. Fenris even had to fit his chestplate over a few tunics. Hawke had brought neither his Champion's armour nor his staff with him, so much was his wish to leave who he represented back in Kirkwall.

If Hawke were to tell the story, he would have said that the trek was uneventful as he dramatically rolled his eyes to the ceiling: Save for a few bears and sabre cats, a squad of Imperial guards escorting a prisoner, a prisoner who later escaped and jumped into the icy river to get away, stirring the Imperial guards into a commotion. And there were the two random boys who ran up to them and offered to sell them some junk they salvaged from the Maker knew where. Hawke, of course, insisted on taking the boys back home, for which he was rewarded with a loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese by the boys' relieved mother. A particularly shady-looking Argonian tried to sell them something called 'skooma' once, but they didn't know what it was, didn't trust him, and didn't have the money for it either so they went on their way. Not long after, they were held up by a robber but a twitch of Fenris' hand to his sword made the man think twice about "gutting them like a fish". Then there was the duel between a Cryomancer and a Pyromancer—which was how Fenris knew magic existed and was loose in the land—which Hawke thankfully decided to slink past without confrontation. It looked like neither were winning anyway and the icy spikes the Cyromancer was hurling made the most damnable noise that rang in the ears of the two long after when they were trying to get some rest at their crude encampment.

They spent most of their nights outdoors. Every so often, they would come across a settlement, or a farmstead, and Hawke would get right down to helping where he could, much to Fenris' chagrin and amusement. It was something to watch the once great Champion of Kirkwall stoop to hoeing the land or harvesting crops for some overworked farmer's wife: "honest pay for honest work". If Fenris ever doubted that the man had once been a lowly farmboy in Lothering, he didn't then. Hawke seemed more at home in the fields than he did in the Viscount's office.

It wasn't unpleasant, barring the occasional wolves or bears when they were camped out at night. They had heard that sundown brought vampires and werewolves, but they hadn't encountered either in their journey. While hardship was known to tear relationships asunder, there was something to be said about its binding powers as well. They broke bread by the fire as whatever catch for the day cooked above it. On the occasions where they could pull a bottle of mead or ale from an abandoned barrel, they warmed themselves with strong drink as they sat sometimes talking, sometimes in silent reverie. The night skies were always clear and starlit. Every few days, an aurora would stream gauze curtains before the same twin moons—the same two, Satina and her partner, that the people of the new land knew to be "Secunda and Masser" instead. Hawke was free with his affections under the stars. As was Fenris, who was often the one to initiate their intimate tangles, desiring to feel the ripples of muscle beneath his hands, to let desire take the place of his markings' continued discomfort, and not once minding the smell of rank sweat or the clinging scent of the leather that the man had taken to wearing, keeping out the night's cold with the warmth of another.

Fenris cut down one of the last few and looked past the man's falling body to Hawke who was fighting with a sword and shield that he'd pulled off one of the dead bandits. Hawke did not make a bad show of it either, though his stance was a little clumsy, unused to the weight and swing of the weapon. However, his timing in bringing up the shield was impeccable and he managed to block all of his enemy's attack.

"You know how to use a sword?" Fenris commented. "I'm impressed."

"Oh, I…" Hawke began, sounding embarrassed. He looked down at the sword in the hand, testing the grip and its weight. "My father taught me a little of swordplay when he was training me. Said a mage never knew when he would need it."

"I have never seen you use the sword in Kirkwall."

"I never carried one."

"You could have if you wanted to."

Hawke placed his shield hand on his chest as he cried dramatically, "And outshine yourself and Aveline? Never!"

It was then that Fenris tried to think of the last time he'd seen Hawke cast spells and realised with slight alarm that Hawke had not since they'd landed in Windhelm. They had always avoided fights before this bandit attack. Fires were left to Fenris to light.

"You…have not used your magic once since we came here," observed Fenris, going up to the man.

"I haven't, have I?"

"Is there a particular reason?" Fenris pressed. His first thought was that Hawke had suddenly lost all abilities to do so, and it didn't sit well with him to think that.

Hawke seemed to consider it and then dropped to search through the bandit's belt for salvage. "I wanted to put it all behind me. I've thought back to the life I've had to lead. Always running, always hiding. How Carver hated it." He paused, gazing into the far distance. "And all those people lost… to magic, to the fight against it… The fight… it's like a season that never ends. That is what it felt like. Then I knew…why it was that I could find no peace…" Hawke clenched his jaw, causing a muscle in it to twitch. "You were right. You were always right. Magic is a curse."

Hawke went back to salvaging with more zeal after, swapping the iron sword that he'd used before for a steel one, and finding forty septims in total among the six bodies.

"I am…glad…"Fenris said, finally. He didn't know why but it got him looking at the bodies all around him. Four out of six of the dead were his: bellies cut open, appendages maimed and dismembered, a head had rolled to a stop within kicking distance of his foot. Blood was matting in his white hair, dyeing parts of it red. He felt dirty and suddenly guilty.

Hawke only grinned over at him, waving a bottle of mead and a purse of gold.

Next Chapter: Dovahkiin