Sorry for the delay, but as you can see, this chapter is a bit longer than the usual. There's a bit of backstory and my personal headcanons for the game, it's a little messed up, so if you played the game and can't recall some details, those are probably my personal headcanons or simply something I made up for the sake of the story. Have fun!


Chapter 8

The stark contrast of temperature between the bathroom and the main hall of the palace made Kate shiver violently, as she stepped in the grand room following Castle. Only now, without the hunger and the fear gnawing at her stomach, she could actually appreciate how big it was. Huge, with tall, stony ceilings, a long table and benches ready for banquets or any other official function the hall was needed for. On the walls, weapon racks and decorative shields gave the hall a solemn feel. She noticed that some of the weapons were very old, but perfectly cleaned. She knew Castle respected his ancestors and was proud of them, and by how the hall of his palace was well kept, she was pretty sure he wanted to show his guests his pride for his past.

Now squeaky clean and dressed in new, tailored clothes, they walked to the throne, where Castle sat. He gestured her to stand at his right and ordered a servant to fetch a chair or stool for her. Once they were both settled, he called Galmar.

His lieutenant, with a cleaned but bruised face, walked in the room and knelt in front of his King. "Your Majesty… I…"

Perfectly aware of the fact that Castle didn't like to be addressed that way and that all those close to him, like Galmar, called him by first name. She deduced that the second in command felt extremely ashamed of his own behavior and of the fact that he had caused such an angered reaction from his king, and preferred to show some deference to him.

However, the King didn't buy it. With a minute gesture of his right hand, he silenced him.

"Cut the crap Galmar, and stand up," ordered Castle.

From her point of view, Kate could not see his face, but she was pretty sure he had transitioned back to his mask, so different from the man that she had taught her how to discern between a poisonous root and one that contained a juice that would stop bleeding almost immediately.

"What I saw, coming here, left me extremely unhappy. Do you have a good reason for having pulled all the guards from the roads and the villages?" he asked. "We stationed in Kynesgrove and there wasn't a single guard there. The last time that village was left unguarded was because a dragon had killed all the guards while they tried to take it down. What happened?"

"I… we have a problem with bandits and I had to send more men out investigating, to find them."

Castle nodded. "I see. What I don't understand is why would you send out people to investigate when you don't have enough men to protect our people from said bandits. And you know that there are still dragons at large, don't you?"

Galmar looked down, his face darkening and blushing, ashamed. "Yes."

"Good. Now tell me again, why did you pull guards from their duties when there are so many dangers out there, for our people?"

The lieutenant sighed, defeated. "Because I was stupid, I made a mistake and I didn't think."

Castle nodded again. "You thought like a soldier. A soldier sees an issue and goes out trying to fix it. A King's first duty, on the other hand, is to protect. I asked you to rule as I would. Have you ever seen me pulling guards from the Hold to go and fetch some bandits?"

He shook his head, grimacing as the sharp movement brought some pain from his probably broken nose. "No. You hired mercenaries, the Companions maybe, or sent bounty notices in inns and on bulletin boards across the hold."

"At least you still remember that. Now, please… do you have an idea where the Dragonborn is?" He shook his head again. "Send couriers to all the major cities and summon her here. And her husband. And tell her to bring as many Companions and sell swords she deems necessary, because I'm sending her tracking down these bandits. Now go, write the missive and send them out by sundown. And I want all the reports of bandit attacks in my study, before you do that."

"They're already there," murmured Galmar.

"Good to know. Now… go. Up until I'm here, I'll take care of the Hold's affairs. You deal with the army and work on that, because at the moment, it absolutely sucks. And make it quick!"

Galmar bowed. "Will do, my King." He turned around and walked away, towards a small door on the left of the throne.

"Where is he going?" asked Kate.

"His office, I think. He has a small room down that corridor where he works. Sometimes. He spends most of his time running around the Hold, or at least he used to. I don't exactly know what he's been doing lately; I'll have to ask Alexis and Mother. Jorleiff?" he called the steward as he sat on a chair off the pedestal where the throne sat.

"Yes, my Lord?"

"Is there anyone petitioning for hearing?"

The steward looked at a small book he kept beneath his doublet. "No, nothing for this afternoon. There's a trial tomorrow, first thing in the morning, Galmar was supposed to officiate it and show Lady Alexis how to be a fair Judge, but I assume you'll prefer to work on it on your own. Then there are some minor hearings scheduled after noon. Do you want me to arrange for supper?"

"Nah, we'll take care of it ourselves. You're free to go, just have the servants settle the Hall for the trial tomorrow. And let the main door open for a while next morning, the air is stale in here. You'll find me in my study, should necessity arise."

"Yes, My Lord."

Sighing, Castle stood up from the throne. "Come on, let's see if you can help me with those bandits."

"So that's why you wanted me here? To serve you as a consultant?"

He walked down the pedestal and Beckett followed him. "It was the main reason I kept you waiting in the cell for so long. I doubted you would have helped me willingly, if I didn't show you some goodwill by allowing you to travel with me as a guest, and not as a prisoner, but before that I had to arrange the trip and the bureaucratic crap that would have allowed Elisif to rule in my place."

He led her back to the war room and up the stairs to the Jarl's private quarters. He walked in the kitchen and grabbed two horn cups. "We've got a fine selection of mead from all over Skyrim, beer, ale; wine imported from Cyrodil and…" he shuffled around the shelves, looking for hidden, forgotten bottles. "Oh! I found a bottle of apple cider!"

"Mead will be just fine, thank you. So now there's Elisif back on the throne?"

He nodded. "For the time being, yes. She's a good ruler, thoughtful and considerate, and I'm working to have the High King Court restored in Windhelm, so I would leave Solitude and Hjaalmarch to her. What do you want? Honningbrew? Black-Briar? Got any preferences?"

"Anything would be alright, but do you have anything spiced? Like with juniper berries or something?"

He picked a large bottle with a handwritten label on it. "Yes! Honningbrew started making it about a year ago and the owner got me a good cask of the first good batch he fermented. It didn't even have a label yet!" He grabbed another bottle of Black-Briar Reserve and led her to his study. "Come on, we've got some work to do before supper."

His study was nothing but a square room with a desk, two chairs and a massive bookcase behind that covered one two of the four walls. A pile of papers encumbered part of the desk surface, and there were books scattered almost everywhere. He opened the blinds of the small window to let some of the weak late afternoon sun in the room. He left the window ajar, in order to let in some fresh air. He pulled a chair away from the desk and let her sit, before walking around the table and sitting down himself. He set the horn cups and the bottles down, and then pushed the spiced mead towards her. "Here, have a drink. I hope you're up for some work now, even if we just arrived here."

Kate took the bottle and pulled the cork off, the poured some of the amber liquid in her cup. "You call hunting bandits work? Pff… it was my favorite past time, back at the fort."

"What do you mean?" he asked, taking a sheet from the pile of documents Galmar had left for him.

"As chief of the band, I was in charge with keeping my men and women safe. Sometimes other groups tried to rob us, or assault us. Most of the time they failed, but we had a rival band that was definitely more ruthless than us. I observed the path of their attacks and tracked them to their hideout, an old Nord burial ground. We attacked them at dawn, they were all asleep. We managed to kill most of them, but their chief was a good archer and wounded me."

"The scar on your chest?" She nodded. "So, in the end you killed someone!"

Kate shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, but I highly doubt farmers and merchants will miss them."

He smiled. "Me too. So… I trust you in this matter. Where do you want to start?"

"First and foremost, I need a map of the hold. I don't know the territories and I need knowledge of the terrain, caves, mines and abandoned forts. Everything a group of desperate men could hide in. Usually, bandits aren't born that way; something drives them to that kind of life."

Castle opened a drawer and pulled a large, rolled sheet of thick paper and spread it on the table. "Here it is. It's not exactly recent, I had this made a couple of years ago and here…" he pointed at a spot down in the south, near the Rift. "A Dwemer ruin has been uncovered. Near there, there are the carbonized remains of an Imperial camp. Except for that, it's up to date."

Kate took the map and examined it. "What about the dragons?"

"What about them?"

"Alduin made quite a mess last year, and some of his big lizard friends are still at large. Were there other attacks? Zones where dragon activity came more often than others?"

Castle shook his head. "Not that I know of. The Dragon… Vivienne told me about a couple of dragon burial sites in the Hold, mostly in the mountains near the border with the Pale and Winterhold, but she took care of it long ago." He poured himself a drink and swallowed the contents of his cup with one swift gulp. "She encountered a couple of lesser dragons while travelling down to Riften, but it seems like most of the dragon attacks took place near Whiterun and Morthal. Some near Markhart. There were never attacks in Windhelm, or Solitude. Why do you ask?"

She nodded, and kept studying the map. "Because if you're on the run or living the life of the highwayman, an overgrown fire-breathing lizard isn't exactly something you wish to meet after breakfast, and they would probably look for a safe place to hide in, where dragons can't reach them. Oh, by the way, there was one dragon flying in Hjaalmarch some time ago, not too far from our fort. About six months if I remember correctly. Ask Vivienne when she comes here; I think she had something to do with its disappearance."

"You can ask her when she comes here."

While Beckett studied the map to familiarize herself with the territory, he went through the reports Galmar had left for him. After a while, she put down the map and took one of the reports herself. Reading through it, she then searched for the place on the map, and marked it with a piece of charcoal pencil.

"What are you doing?" asked the King.

"What you asked me to do," she replied, drily. "I'm marking down every location of every reported attack." She took another paper and marked down another location. "Usually bandits more on foot. Large groups of men on horses tend to attract too much attention from guards, as they make a lot of noise. Now, if I delimit their area of action, I might find the right hideout without even leaving this room."

"Did that work before?"

"Just five times out of six, but it worked," she explained.

"And the sixth time?"

"Vivienne caught us before we could rat them out of their hideout, so I don't know if I was right or not. We were supposed to leave and find them that day."

He nodded. "Fair enough. Let's say it's five out of five then, our chances sound better that way."

They continued for a couple of hours. The sun set behind the mountain, shedding the last light on Skyrim and then on Morrowind, the native land of Dunmer. They had to light candles in order to see the papers in front of their eyes, but when Martha knocked on the door, a tray with two bowls of rabbit stew, a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine for them. They weren't exactly hungry, considering the improvised banquet Alexis had been able to prepare them not five hours earlier, but his mother was as tenacious as orichalcum ore: they bad spent days rationing the little food they had, and they needed to put some meat back on their bones. Not that they needed it, but the soup was delicious and the wine tasted heavenly, so they didn't put much of a fight and simply put down the dusty papers and ate under Martha's watchful eye.

By the time his mother turned all protective on them though, Kate had already outlined a scheme the bandits seemed to follow and the area they operated. However, those were smart bandits. In the past six months, they had never hit twice in the same place. Close, yes. But never twice in the same place. That meant that trying to figure out a pattern was impossible. The area they operated in was small, in the south of the Hold, close to the border with Riften. So close that Beckett dared to think they were also active in that Hold, but kept well away from major settlements. Smart move, she thought. That would have kept investigating parties away from them for longer.

"Is there anything more in those papers?" she asked.

Castle shrugged. "Not much. They give us some not so precise indications about their equipment, they usually travel in small parties, four or five people, and they say they are well organized. The few witnesses that guards have been able to find and interrogate spoke of Imperial accents mixed with local inflections."

"Deserters, then. Or remnants of that camp that was destroyed last year, here." She pointed at a circle she had added to the map to mark down a former Imperial temporary settlement that had been wiped after the end of the Civil War. "Or a bit of both maybe."

"You sure?"

She shook her head. "No, but I've seen a lot of Imperial soldiers stranded and left alone when General Tullius was killed. Without orders, support or even the faintest idea of what to do, many of them tried to cross the border to Cyrodil and go back home, but unfortunately it was nearly impossible as winter was approaching," she explained. "I've seen my fair share of soldiers desperate enough to repudiate his uniform and the oath sworn to the Empire and kill a traveler for the meager piece of bread he had in his bag. Or half frozen men with tattered uniforms that joined existing groups of bandits or forming a new one."

"What about your men? Any Imperial soldiers among them?"

"No. Well, yes… but he had been discharged after a bear nearly mauled his leg off. A great archer, could hit a man many yards away. But he joined us when the army sent him away with little to nothing, only a small amount of money and the clothes he owned. We found him in a cave in the mountains east of Solitude, starving. We gave him food, a warm place to stay and a purpose. His arrows in the knees were legendary."

"Javier Esposito? Tall, broad shoulders, a slight limp in his gait?"

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"No, I know of him. When I heard of his amazing abilities, I conscripted him in the army. He's paying for his crimes by teaching the recruits archery, in Solitude."

"You know anything about Kevin Ryan?"

"The half elf bard? Oh yes… he's… by Julianos let me think… he's with the Companions with the other guy, Skaal. Sharp wit and quick thinking, I thought he could do a good mercenary," he told her. "He gathered intelligence for you, didn't he?"

Kate nodded, relieved that her best friends were unharmed, in places they would be comfortable in. "What about Lanie?"

"Ah, the Redguard… She's in the healers team, ready to be dispatched where needed. She now resides in Solitude. Sassy gal, that one."

"Oh, believe me; you haven't seen the best of her. Are you really going back to Solitude in a month?"

"Maybe two. Do you wish to meet them? That's not a problem."

She raised a puzzled eyebrow. "Don't you think we may gang up on you and try to escape?"

Castle chuckled. "I highly doubt it, if I have to be sincere. You're all stationed in places that suit you and with roles that fit you well. Your sentence's a little heavy maybe, but I think you can manage it."

"Heavy? What do you mean?"

"You're stuck with me!"

Laughing, she threw him a piece of charcoal. "Shut up, Castle, don't be an idiot."

He caught the charcoal and threw it back to her. "I have to be serious all the time, allow me to joke a little when I'm with you."

Smiling, Kate went back to work, but she was weary from all the travelling and the five days stuck in the cabin had been more tiresome than she had expected. In addition, the abundant late lunch and the long, hot bath had left her more relaxed than she had ever been in her all life. The mead and the wine only completed the scene and made her groggy and sleepy.

"Castle… do you mind if I go to sleep? I'm kind of tired…"

He nodded. "Come with me, I'll show you my room."

"Your room?" she asked as he opened the door and stepped in the corridor.

"Well, where do you want to sleep? The guest rooms? Nah… You get the best of the best from now on."

"You flatter me Castle, but I don't really deserve it."

He opened a door and let her in. "I'm alive because you killed that bandit. You allowed me to come home and see my daughter again. You deserve this and much more." He let her in. "I hope you like it."

Well, it wasn't much different from any other master bedroom in any other wealthy house of Skyrim, but it had a homely feeling that she had rarely experienced in her life. Fireplace, a large bed with a proper mattress and good quality bedding, a huge window that allowed her to see for miles towards the south, even the famous light from the monastery of High Hrothgar, the biggest wardrobe she had ever seen and more bookshelves adorned with books books books and more books.

"Is there a room without books in this place?" she asked, as she looked around.

"The kitchen, the bathroom and… and that's that. Generations of Stormcloaks and Castles added their knowledge to the palace, and I'm their custodian."

"When did the Stormcloak family line become Castle?"

"Around the time of the Oblivion Crisis. No male heir to bring on the family name. Jarl Freya Stormcloak married a noble of a now nearly deceased family, a certain Wulfgar Castle. Since he was the last in line, Freya decided to change the family name in Castle Of The Stormcloak, to pay homage to a small family that had supplied able men and women for our army for centuries. Technically, I'm the last living male bearing the Castle family name."

"Someone could have cut it to restore the traditional name."

"Yes. But no one ever did it. The Castles were an important family, once. Their family line can be traced back to the Five Hundred of Ysgamor, and it's an honor to bear both names. People just started call me Castle just because Castle Of The Stormcloak sounds a bit redundant, but the official name is Richard Alexander Edgar Rogers Castle Of The Stormcloak."

Kate nodded. "Good to know. I wish my family name bore such a beautiful story too."

"Where do you come from?" he asked, closing the door behind them.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Here and there. My father came from Cyrodil, from the Imperial city. He was a lawyer and traveled a lot because of this, to settle disputes and things like that. One day he came to Falkreath to help the Jarl settle a mess with someone in Bruma, just south of the Jerell Mountains, and he met my mother. The Jarl was so happy about how my dad had dealt with everything that he conferred him the role of Thane and gave him a plot of land to build a house on. They married and they had me. Fast forward twenty-five years later and they were murdered because no matter what, they refused to take down the Talos Shrine in our courtyard. I was lucky I had gone hunting in the woods just east of there, or I would have been killed too."

"What about your mother? What did she do?" he asked, as he pulled some clean, more comfortable clothes out of the wardrobe for them both.

"She was a lawyer too, but she was more expert in violent crimes, my father was one of those specialized in dealing with bureaucracy and economic stuff."

He nodded. "I see. And you? What were you, before becoming the scourge of Hjaalmarch?"

She chuckled, but there was a shade of regret in that sound. "I was set to follow my parents' way. I traveled to the Imperial city to enroll in law school, but a racist Thalmor wouldn't accept me because I was half Nord. And guess what, you still had to start making a mess, so I can't even blame you for that."

"So, what did you do?"

"I traveled back home and started studying on my parents' books. That's all. I worked at the Inn in Falkreath, hunted and sold some game from time to time… the normal things a girl in Skyrim does to survive. The rest… well, you know the rest. But you still have to tell me about what happened in Helgen!"

Castle snickered, as he unbuttoned the finely embroidered vest he was wearing. "I'm surprised you don't know yet."

"I've heard things. Can you pass me that shirt, please?" asked Kate as she started getting ready for bed herself. He grabbed one of his oldest shirt, once white and now yellowed by all the washing, and threw it at her. "So… what happened?"

"After I killed Torygg I tried to escape, down to Cyrodil. I have contacts there; they could have kept me safe until things got a little calmer, maybe after the Moot or something, so that I could return to Windhelm. Ralof, one my subordinates, was with me at the time. We were ambushed, just south of there, we were nearly at the pass, but the horses were tired and we had to slow down. Therefore, they caught up on us, took another path and waited for us right on the border. We tried to fight our way out, but they were too many and I didn't want to spill more blood than necessary, so we surrendered," he explained. He approached a corner of the room, where a porcelain basin rested on a tripod. He poured some water from a jug nearby in it and washed his face. "We were tied up, I was gagged so I couldn't Shout, and we were hoarded on an open carriage so we could be moved to the nearest Imperial settlement. At the time, Falkreath was aligned with the Empire, so Helgen was chosen as our place of execution. Let me wash my teeth, then I'll finish the tale. There's a toothbrush for you too."

Kate hadn't seen a proper toothbrush in two years. Usually made of wood and coarse horsehair, toothbrushes weren't cheap and admittedly, Nords weren't exactly keen on washing their teeth. Culturally, they relied more on cleansing concoctions or healing potions, should need arise. Personal hygiene wasn't exactly the best, up in the north, but being half-Imperial, Kate was used to a lot of southern customs too. Toothbrushes included.

Too bad she never had the chance to get one, during the past two weeks. The idea of having one of her own once again was more than titillating.

The King handed her a brand new one, along with a small jar with a thick bluish paste in it. They both wetted the bristles with some water from the jug and gathered some of the paste with the brush. She had almost forgot how bad cleansing pastes tasted, for ages she had thought alchemists would prepare them that way to discourage people. This one wasn't so bad, but the salt used to scrape the dirt away from the mouth didn't exactly go well with the bitter taste of the purified clay used as a base. Still better than having to prepare a makeshift mouthwash with crudely distilled wine where they would out blue mountain flower petals to extract the curative agents.

She was back in civilization for less than a day and she was already realizing how being a bandit sucked.

Once they were done with that, they wore the clothes they would sleep in and climbed in the bed, so Castle could continue his tale.

"Anyway… the Imperials and the Elves had a couple more of prisoners. One was a horse stealer form Rorikstead... I think. Bah, I don't remember anyway. But most of all there was a particular Breton that was trying to cross the border into Skyrim to join the Stormcloak rebellion."

"Let me guess, that was Vivienne?"

"Exactly!" he exclaimed. "But let's get to the really interesting part of the story: we were all supposed to be beheaded. They killed the thief, because he had tried to escape and one of my soldiers… before they called her to the block. The executioner had already raised his massive axe when… well, when Alduin landed on a tower, breathing fire everywhere and destroying what couldn't be set on fire with his massive wings. We took advantage of the ruckus and managed to escape. I crossed the mountains with a couple of guards and managed to arrive in Ivarstead right when a transport was passing there, heading to Windhelm. That's it. That's what happened in Helgen."

Kate was stunned. "Wow…" she whispered. "And here I thought being a bandit was an adventurous life. Being a Jarl… that's way better!"

Castle laughed, wholeheartedly. "No, believe me. After my father died and I became Jarl of Windhelm, there have been way less adventures than when I was in the Imperial army! Or when I was in High Hrothgar, to be fair."

"Oh now that's a good one! When did you learn to Shout?" she asked, turning on her side to face him.

"I was selected by one of the Greybeards up at the monastery when I was a little boy. I stayed there for ten years, and I learned my way through some Shouts, like… Unrelenting Force, which is the one I use the most, Disarm and Dismay, what I used while retaking Markhart from the Forsworn… I know two thirds of Frost Breath and all the three words for Fire Breath… stuff like that," he said. "Thing is… There was unrest in Skyrim while I was up there, and the little details I got to know through the man that brought up supplies for the monastery scared me. I argued with Arngeir, my mentor, and when I was fifteen I just left in the middle of the night. I climbed down the Seven Thousand steps and walked back to Windhelm."

"What happened then?"

"My father sent me to join the Imperial army. We were still fighting the Thalmor at the time. It didn't matter much, we were defeated. The Elves, knowing who my father was, caught me and tortured me for days. When they let me go, I met a girl that helped me get better. I brought her home with me."

"Meredith?"

He nodded. "Yes. Things got messy after that. We got married, we had Alexis, I became Jarl and it seemed like even with the Empire defeated, things would be good. But then there was the Markhart thing with the Forsworn… I guess you know about it. "She nodded. "Right… someone thought I was making too much noise, blatantly opposing the White Gold Concordat and ordered a hit on Meredith. They thought it would silence me, too bad it spurned me to become the rebellious Jarl that in the end got so fed up with the corruption that killed the High King. A normal day in politics, after all."

Kate grunted. "Normal my ass," she exclaimed.

"Well, if I can give you my opinion, your ass is way above par."

She rewarded him with a playful slap on his chest. "You could have spared that. But… seriously… you know that if only half of what you told me became public knowledge, people would stop thinking you're just a bloodthirsty bastard that wanted the throne for himself from day one."

"Did you know that I begged the Jarls not to elect me?"

"No I didn't. But seriously, as I said… if the population could see the man behind the mask of the king, you'd have way less people violently opposing you. You know that there are still some people that are faithful to the Empire."

He nodded, again. "Oh, I'm well aware of that. And I know that if what I just told you became public people would change their minds about me, but the thing is, I don't want their pity. I want to be accepted because I'm a good king, and I'm working my ass off to change things."

"I see that. But you really need to realize that you will never be accepted if you don't reveal at least part of the true reasons you did what you did. Start with me: tell me the real reason you killed Torygg."

His face suddenly became dark and angry. "Because he was a dirty corrupted bastard, that's why. The Thalmor bribed him, exploited his popularity and with time, he was releasing rules and laws that would slowly kill Skyrim as a nation. First he stripped the Temple Of The Nines in Solitude of all traces of Talos, then came the prohibition of even private worship, that's the law that killed your parents… and many other little things that he was so sordidly doing that would kill our culture, favoring the Thalmor's plans of imposing their own views of the world over ours. The last stand came when I received a missive from Torygg, among the other Jarls, that forced Imperial guards over our Hold's militia. And requested that every temple in Skyrim had a Thalmor approved priests and acolytes. Some books would be banned, Nords couldn't marry other races anymore… he was about to proclaim laws like that. He was slowly making living in Skyrim impossible, for men, elves… everyone. I had to stop him."

She could hardly believe him, considering how Torygg seemed such a careful ruler, so attentive towards his subjects, but he wasn't lying. He wasn't making up things, she could read it in his tear brimmed eyes.

"So?"

"I traveled to Solitude. Me, Ralof and a small contingent of guards. I asked a private hearing, and he stupidly showed me all the money he was making. He showed me the drafts of some even more restrictive laws he was about to declare effective, like the order of expulsion of all orcs, even those living in the strongholds, stuff like that… I managed to save them, they're still in my office, in Solitude, I can show you… And he was smiling!" he burst, angrily. "He was drunk, so I didn't think it would be a good idea to challenge him to a duel, so I waited until next morning, when he was sober. Or so I thought. I challenged him, he accepted, we fought and I used a low powered Shout. I just wanted him to trip, that's all. I pushed him, he tripped trying to regain his balance and he fell. He hit his head, but he stood again. I think the blow to the back of his head stunned him, because he started fighting like a kid. He bashed his sword on mine and… I defended myself. The moment I saw an opening, I cut his throat. After that, I ran away."

"Did you want to kill him from the beginning?"

He shook his head. "No. I was furious, but I just wanted to show the people in court that if he wasn't a good fighter he wasn't suitable to rule a nation of warriors like Skyrim. It was a first blood duel, not a kill or be killed thing. But he was so stunned he wouldn't stop when I lowered my sword. He just kept coming at me, trying to kill me. I panicked and… well, let's just say I keep my sword very sharp."

"Any witness?"

"The whole court. But people saw what they wanted to see and you know… false news travels fast."

She snickered. "Believe me, I know all too well. So, right now, what do you plan to do?"

Castle took a deep breath and tried to relax a little bit more on the bed, sagging into it. "Right now? I'm amending all the ridiculous laws Torygg made up to please the Thalmor, turning into something that doesn't smother Skyrim or anyone living here. It's taking time, but the Jarls are helping. For now. After that, it's all about making everyone's life safer with a well-trained army, a steady supply of food for everyone and if I can manage it, stop blatant racism towards non Nords that have done nothing to hurt anyone. The majority of them live a respectable life, pay taxes and work for Skyrim's wellbeing."

"What do you want to do about bandits?"

"Catch them and have them judged fairly, if I can come up with some ground rules that I know every Jarl will follow. I'm all in for penal labor for those who don't kill, like you guys. Problem is, most of the gangs like to kill, and people don't take murder that good, in this land."

"I know Castle. And about that, I can help. I've been a bandit for two years, I know how they think and act. We're not a complicated kind, but many of us don't actually want to be bandits," she said. "But those who want to be, they can be cruel as draugrs."

He nodded, then sneaked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards him. She silently snuggled closer to him and lay her head on his chest, revelling in the warmth radiating from his body. "Tired?" she asked.

"Yes…" he whispered. "The past few days have been a bit… wearing."

She chuckled. "I think I know what you mean. And by the way, it wasn't all my fault if you couldn't keep your hands off me."

"Says the woman that the moment she saw me on that bed pulled away the covers and jumped over me."

"You didn't seem to mind much. And for fuck's sake, I had just come out of a dry spell, and so did you. I don't really think anyone would blame us for all the sex we've had in that shack."

"I don't envy the next person stranded there. Did we even clean up?" he questioned.

"I did, but have the hay changed as soon as you can. It's nearly rotten, by now."

He gently kissed the crown on her head. "Will do. Sleep now, you deserve it, after all you've done for me."

"It was the least I could do, for the King that asked forgiveness for ruining my life."

He smiled, briefly. "Thank you for your trust, then. Sweet dreams, Kate."

"With you, always."


Aaand… I'm inclined to close it here. I wanted them to go out and hunt some draugr, maybe clean a dungeon (I'll have to find a suitable one in the game though, but my most recent Dragonborn is now level 43, going on 44 so I can deal with most of the dungeons in the game without an issue) but only if you want to see come more action among undead creatures. So, what should I do?