Azuyia stopped to talk with a Dunmer dressed in a traditional Morrowind gown showing her occupation to be a legal scribe, and Wystan plopped himself on a free stool motioning to the barkeep. Denthryd walked over to the fireplace and warmed his hands.
Wystan appeared and clapped him on the shoulder with a wine eye and a laugh.
"Hey, man! Les' go sit down, eh?" He had a green glass bottle and two pewter cups in his other hand.
"Right," Denthryd said dourly. Azuyia had struck up a conversation with the Dunmer, laughing and carrying on across the room. He followed Wystan to a side table against the wall under a display of an old Nord breastplate split in the heart.
"Aw, some tosser from Eastmarch boonies," they both heard from backs turned, guys seated at the long bench next to the central fire in the floor, much guffawing, a belch.
"Kennt," another voice echoed from the group of men still wearing cheap iron corselets and various low-end helmets.
Wystan read the scene. He saw his friend's blood rising before he had lowered his cup to the table. Oh no, not tonight.
"Den ... Den," he offered, "walk away. We don't need it."
Denthryd sat still, quaffing at his cup and then filling it to the brim with Alto wine. He raised the brim to his mouth and threw its contents back, stood up to walk down the free space between the wall and the bench where the toughs sat spouting, walking slowly in Azuyia's direction. The laughing and crass jokes continued to the dismay of other patrons and Kirila, the innkeeper, did leave the bar to walk over and say something in a low voice to the nearest guy on the bench. He raised his flagon, gave a what for with his other hand, and continued drinking and laughing.
"Skeevy mage," the muttering continued.
Denthryd turned in the direction of the men on the bench, and both Wystan and Azuyia stood up. He walked directly over to the one who had just belted out, extended his hand, and flipped the guy's helmet clear off his head to fall with a loud thunk to the ground behind him. All five of them stood up.
"You gotta prob, mate," the one asked him.
He and Denthryd were about the same size. The bounder had a full beard and close-shaven head with indigo tattooing around both eyes. Not Legion, just a mercenary at best from the bottom shelf metal.
"Yeah. You," Denthryd said. At this the other laughed with his head back, and his buddies chuckled.
"Oh? And what, prayest thou tell me, fine sirrah, wouldst thou care to do about such, anon," he mimicked in style of the popular stage dramas.
"Step outside?"
At that the man's face grew a bit more serious. He still had a mocking smirk, arms crossed. "And what shouldst such a pretty boy plan on, then? Wishing me away?"
The other five laughed heartily while the crowd in the tavern was keeping its distance, and patrons were nervously moving their business to tables well away from the scene. Denthryd moved towards the door but then walked directly up to the man, standing with his feet almost touching, drew his right hand out to the side and slapped the other man hard across the cheek. At this, Kirila rushed over.
"Out! Both of you, out! Wanna fight? Outside ... now!"
Denthryd pushed the tavern door. He walked down the steps to the street turned around, and faced the tavern entrance. The bounder and his five were outside in no time. A crowd followed them from the tavern, Azuyia and Wystan trying to get past the initial rush, and others in the street stopped at the obvious beginning of a brawl. The man had replaced his helmet and had a warhammer on his back. Denthryd made no motion, kept his hands by his sides. The crowd formed in a rough semicircle, the space behind him a little clearer due to the proximity of a public well.
"Oh ... kayyy, milkdrinker, what's ... it ... gonna ... beeee?"
The man pulled the warhammer from his back and stood with feet planted wide, knees slightly bent, the head of the weapon down towards the ground to his right, handle raised in his left hand. Denthryd had the wakizashi on his back, and drew it with his left hand to both chuckles and murmurs from the crowd. Then he extended his right hand out in front of him, forearm out with palm up, upper arm loosely against his torso. A bluish-green flame as long as a sword burst upwards from his palm and hovered, appearing just above his skin in a rush. The flames didn't dance like a normal hearth or brazier, more hissing and rushing continually upward. The crowd rustled and the semicircle widened by twofold so that Denthryd and the other man were mostly alone in the street.
Three Fletchersgate guards with lowered visors and carrying Legion pila appeared at equidistant points near them, points lowered at body level.
"Stop!" one yelled. "You are endangering the lives of citizens!" His visor faced Denthryd. "Lower your weapons! Now!"
The other two faced the bounder, and he haughtily relaxed to normal stance, setting the hammer's head on the ground before one guard quickly took it from him and the other hustled him off, pushing his back and swearing. The third guard remained facing Denthryd with his pilum at face level. A squad of XIV Southern milites appeared down the street headed by a bareheaded older man in heavy Imperial armor and wearing a gladius with the purple scabbard inscribed with silver runes. By the time they got to the whispering, wide-eyed crowd, Wystan and Azuyia saw fifteen men, counting the first guard who had since raised his visor to reveal a scarred middle-aged face, who were now taking Denthryd away. The leader walked up to him close enough to speak without any onlooker hearing.
"If you even think about using that between here and the bailey, I will put you in the hog pens and take my chances with the thane. Understand?" Denthryd nodded briefly, and two of the guards grabbed his arms, and he was also hustled off.
Denthryd woke up early. He had spent the night on a straw pile on the floor of the thane's combination courthouse, tax station, jail, and treasury. Of course he had been offered no food or water, and listened to a couple of inebriates from around town howl the night away. He was not in a good mood for starters. Then a civil guard in watch livery carrying a truncheon unlocked the gate to his cell, and profanely ordered him to walk out and up the passageway stairs, turn to the right at one of the bailey's main rooms, stand there, and wait. The door shut, and Denthryd stood and waited in the room. It had excellent appointment for a regional thane's civic building. He recognized the dark, carved wood from pieces he had seen in his few trips into Windhelm, expensive exotica only to be had here by way of Khajiit caravans. It was probably Argonian material, who knows the craft or the make. There was an extravagant desk there with a very high-backed carved wooden chair of the same foreign material with what probably been Imperial crimson leather cushioning worn by time into a light rose tint.
He stood long enough to get bored and want to sit down. So he sat on the hardwood floor, crosslegged, and waited some more. There was a window in the room looking out on the street. It had bars, for sure, but at least the light filtered in. The sun had moved further west. At last, the door made a noise and opened. Two men and a woman walked in. The older of the two men sat in the chair, and the other two stood at either side. Seated was the thane Cenric with Ainn to his right. At his left stood Titus Anvila, tribunus legionis and third in command of the XIV Southern who had won his name as a naval commander in the war against the Thalmor. Not of senatorial family, he nevertheless personally oversaw most of the Southern business along with the primus pilus and other staff.
"Would you mind telling me," Cenric began, "what you think you were doing last night?"
"I ... uh ... " Denthryd said, between tiredness and lack of any story to tell really.
"Yes, that is what I thought," the thane replied, "not thinking at all about what you were doing. Do you realize, young man, that there were children in that crowd? Do you? Forget the damage that magical fire can do this town should it spread, there were children present!"
"I know, sir, and I'm very sorry," Denthryd tried to say.
"Sorry. We tolerate magic because it helps us in the war. Because Stormcloaks have it, so we too have it. And that's it. We do not tolerate the reckless usage of dangerous methods in our town squares!"
At this, Ainn spoke. "You have recklessly endangered the lives of men, women, and children in Fletchersgate, and in front of witnesses also drawn a blade on a fellow Nord for uncivil, selfish reasons."
"But ... he had a warhammer! Ma'am!"
"And he is being dealt with as well. You are from Eastmarch, correct?"
"Yes. And I am not a Stormcloak!"
"Nobody is accusing you of treason, son," Anvila said. "You are being charged with the endangerment of Fletchersgate citizenry by the unlawful brandishing of a blade and use of magic."
Denthryd did not know what to say. He absolutely fumed inside at the hauteur, and what he saw as the petty exercise of power. Yet he also knew enough about a fiefdom, having grown up a stone's throw from one of the biggest, oldest ones not to run his mouth in the presence of officials.
They were waiting outside when Denthryd walked out of the bailey at last. He was feeling sour, to say the least, and said nothing as he tried to walk past them. Wystan cleared his throat, and Azuyia grabbed his hand.
"Hey ... Den," she said.
"So what did they give you," Wystan asked, slightly smiling. Denthryd stiffened like he would rush the guy. He was tired and only wanted to go to the tavern, get drunk, and lie down.
"Den," Azuyia pulled him close and whispered in his ear, "he paid your bail, man." He looked at her, and she nodded. "Coulda been a lot longer till today, know?"
He woke up before dawn and had a cup of strong herbs he had brewed the night before, took three tawny seeds procured off the apothecary's special list the previous day with the bitter mixture, you know, the list kept under the counter for customers who know what to ask for? Windhelm being a port city, Denthryd had grown up around a modicum of imported palliatives that folk in his village acquired at the docks, kept in apothecary jars tucked away among summer preserves. He had started with the nets and fish barrels when he was five years old, and so had experienced the gurry sores on his forearms from a long season pulling goods out of salt water. One evening his mother had given him a seed from the plants in Black Marsh to swallow with his tea, a relief in his blood as she rubbed his cracked hands with a mash of flour and elve's ear.
Limbs warming and things receding in the distance of yesterday, he headed out of the tavern and the town's gate, trying not to look at the guards who, while visors lowered, might know something about him. The camp was a full day's wagon ride to the northeast. He stopped in to a grub shack outside the town gates near the stables, just an open pit smoker and fireplace behind a rough table with a four stools.
"Whaddya have," the orc asked. Mak had grown his business around the area by not catering to couriers.
"Steak ... and ale."
Denthryd had a greasy wooden plate of hash browns as well. He hadn't eaten in a day since all the fun began. Farm breakfast tasted great.
He got out of the wagon after a jarring ride and tipped the driver, walked up to the gate of what had until recently been the regional headquarters of an Imperial cavalry regiment, the Fifth Steppe Watch, a medium horse unit people called the Bastards for some reason. During walks with Azuyia and Wystan, some of them had gone riding through the fields on exercises perhaps. They had been wearing cuir bouilli with mail torso, and curiously no headgear of any kind, with short bows strapped to their backs and curved sabers in saddle harness.
The walls and lowered gate, extended over a moat several times the height of a Nord were constructed of completely untreated timber for the most part. Walking closer, he noticed the walls had a sort of mortar made of the native Falkreath soil and rocks, and sod with live grasses growing out of it. Inside the gate there was virtually nothing left that gave any clue of a Legion unit's residence in the area other than seven wooden sheds nearly the length of the walled camp, as wide as four village houses each looked. The green of the pastures outside the gates was gone. In its stead was a trampled expanse of mud around and in front of the sheds. Other than the structures, there were only water troughs here and there like you'd find outside nearly every home and business. A man in Legion livery, the scarlet tunic fitted with leather straps and embellishments that all soldiers wore like a second skin underneath their armor, and light army leather boots and gloves walked up to him from across the stretch of mud in front of the nearest shed.
"G'day, my boy," he said happily, extending his hand. The guy looked about sixty, shaven head, white stubbled face looked like it had seen a few fights. "Name's Kaiain. Praefectus for the Fifth. Been at it forty-three years!"
Denthryd said nothing, stared blankly.
"Got no idea what I jes' said d'ya?"
Denthryd looked at him warily. "You're ... Breton?"
"Thaz royt, lad," Kaiain replied, "all the way from the islands off High Rock, nor' by nor' west. You couldn't get any farther and still call it Tamriel," he smiled and spat in the mud.
Any other time, Denthryd would have been fascinated to talk to this one, but there was the matter at hand.
"Sooooo ..." he asked, "You know you know why I'm here?"
The older man cracked a smile, and took out a hand-sized dull metal flask from the pouch next to the pugio on his frayed Legion cingulum with several stylized iron dragon heads and a patinated bronze Altmer crest punched through it. Years, operations, and the Great War. He swigged from it, and turned toward the door of the first long shed, motioning with the flask hand.
"Let's go."
They walked up the barn doors. There was a tree trunk post right out front of this one with a smooth wooden board fixed to it at eye level with nails. The man walked to the one side of the double doors, motioned to Denthryd to take the other by its wrought iron handle, and they both pulled back with their entire body weight. Once moving the doors were easy to push, and the shed opened up and then let out its telltale fragrance.
Oh man, he thought with a sinking feeling in his gut, not this.
The sheds had been stables. Upon entering the camp, Denthryd had hoped beyond hope that the mud was from the horses' hooves and these temporary wooden buildings were the troops' quarters. Boy, had he been mistaken, exactly the opposite. The army had apparently been in tents out in the elements, and the horses had been in here. Whew. He felt a hand clap his left shoulder. Kaiain stood next to him, then, and took more swigs from his flask.
His tone changed to an official drawl.
"You have been assigned to help the fiefdom of Fletchersgate prepare for the turning and sowing next year," he began. "Ever worked on a farm?"
"No," Denthryd sighed, "but there were plenty around in Eastmarch."
"Good, then you know the value of manure," Kaiaian smiled. "We'll need all of this," he gestured towards the stalls and open areas extending the length of several town streets, "in a single pile just inside the main gate."
"What?!"
Kaiain turned to him without a smile, but also with no malice in his demeanour or tone. "You are ... to shovel out ... the stables ... for the farmers to spread in their fields. There," he pointed to a smelter's shovel. "Follow me, we need to talk about other details."
Wow, Denthryd thought, more fun.
As he was estimating the weight of one shovel load and multiplying it by the apparent length of the shed and visible volume of horse dung, and by seven, then the distance of the beginning to the end of the shed out into the yard where Kaiain wanted it all piled, the two walked past the six additional shed fronts and down the camp yard to another medium warehouse at the back corner of the entire facility. Walking up to it, Denthryd saw a couple of heavy timber tables like tanners use to skin a wolf before stretching its hide on the rack and begin scraping. They were also stained like a tanner's station. Kaiain pulled the ring of keys that had been jangling at his cingulum, fiddled through them, and put one large steel key into the lock on the door.
More fun. If the stables had stunk like dung, this place had flies and a rancid cloud of an odor that had him rush back outside, double over, and hurl his potatoes on the ground.
"What the ..." he gasped at Kaiain, steadying himself back up.
"Legion's gotta eat, m'boy. Same as you townies at your steaks and ale."
It had been the slaughterhouse for an entire regiment of horse, and apparently it had not been cleaned out either. Denthryd held his stomach and stepped back inside the building, took a look around from just inside the door. It was also a retching mess, bones piled on the ground, bloody rot covered in maggots, flies everywhere.
"You are to put everything in there," Kaiain said behind him, "into those." Denthryd turned back around and walked outside past Kaiain. He was pointing past the slaughterhouse to a pile of barrels, and walking around back motioned to dozens and dozens of them.
"Talos ... man, why? I can understand the stables, but ... this?"
"Because every bit of that can be used. Bone meal can make fertilizer, alchemists can brew it, I even hear you magic types use it. All that blood, too, fertilizer. Scoop it out, put it in the barrels. I'll have it shipped out in wagons when you are done." Kaiain then started to walk away back towards the camp's main entrance.
"Wait!" Denthryd called at him.
"Yes?"
"Nothing," the novice said dejectedly, having wanted to ask if were to get any help, thinking better of it.
"There will be a scrip on the duty board each morning. I believe you signed your accusation at the bailey already?"
"Yesssss," Denthryd replied.
"Good. The thane knows your sign, then, and will be expecting it each day. Do remember to sign in, man, I'd hate to have to fill out any additional papers about you," the senior man smiled knowingly at him, turned, and walked away.
Our penitent novus lowered himself into one of the troughs of rainwater at the far side of the camp at dusk the following week. He had a bar of Alik'r jasmine and a new horse-grooming brush. His nostrils had lost their sensitivity to the scents, yet others' had not. Azuyia had clued him in to this one. After one humiliating try, the third or fourth day into his chores, at renting a dive room with a washtub in the Fletchersgate flophouse district and getting thrown out at the point of a fishing knife, he had resigned himself to scrubbing in the former horse troughs with perfumed soap, two or three times over, and only then heading into town for a drink and a bed.
"It'll be done soon, Den," she told him one night at the Cock and Bull, "and trust me, nobody cares. These people see folk draw on each other all the time. How," she laughed, "do you think the thane's buildings keep such a fine coat of paint all year long in this weather? Cheap labor from Morrowind?"
Denthryd sulked and took a shot before the ale.
Azuyia leaned in. "He's got that pretty little mansion because fights like yours give him 'compensatory labor.' Isn't that what your sheet said?"
"Something like that," he growled.
"Just be glad this isn't one of the ancient centers like Markarth or, you know, Windhelm. I hear they actually string people up for drawing open flame like you did. You gotta learn to let it roll off you, man, and ... control that temper of yours."
Denthryd looked at her. "What did he get for pulling a fekn battle piece on me 'in front of witnesses,' hmm?"
Azuyia smiled. "Oh, you're gonna love this one," she laughed and took a swig at her ale.
"Surprise me," he said flatly.
"Well, I spoke with the council who hands out the papers like you got. Went up to the bailey every day, starting that night when Wys and I were looking into your situation, and continued until I got a short appointment with one of the thane's secretaries. I got all of sixty seconds, but I was told that the guy ... he and his crew, those, had been a nuisance in the hold before. The other five were banned from town, told never to enter the hold again unless they had a writ stating their business, and it's my impression that group doesn't have it in them to procure such things. He, that secretary, told me they were basically a bandit team that had avoided outright trial because they had never hit anything near the capital, and anyone who knew of their doings was too scared to talk. The bully you drew on," she continued, "he has been made an example."
Denthryd swallowed another round, and turned his full body in the seat towards her, leaning on his hand. "Oh?"
Azuyia laughed and smacked her thigh lightly. "Yep. Thane Cenric like I say is not concerned with blood drinkers in the street … yet ... and has just sponsored an entire cohort of Watch. And you know this. Soooooo ... while you are compensating their civil society here by packaging several tons of fertilizer," she gleamed, enjoying her moment just a tad, "he has been asked to work towards the education of Falkreath children while you do it."
Denthryd grumped and motioned for more. "They made him a teacher while I get to shovel shyte and guts?"
"No ... not a teacher," she replied, "and not paid anything just the same. No, he's being trundled to and fro between the primary schools of the entire hold by the thane's personal guard. Each new location, he is required to speak to the assembled group of usually seven- to eleven-year olds about the importance of civil interdependence, the connection of, say," she flourished with her hand, "a magician to a fighting unit in the defense of the country."
"Great. I shovel, he gives speeches about patriotism."
"Not patriotism, silly. They make him wear a robe like ours, only without any capabilities beyond normal cloth."
Denthryd finally smiled. "You're joking."
"No, dead serious. Each school they truck him to gets a scripted speech about respect and citizenship. I cashed in a favor with the thane's staff because I've done some work for them, minor stuff like, well, certain potions people tend to enjoy together, and found out that it takes a good hour or so for him to recite. Can you imagine? That dumbarse must've broken his head over it! Then," she chuckled, "when he's done with that, and every day until you finish your shift, he serves lunch to the kids and cleans up after them. Washes every plate, cup, knife, spoon, and fork. One of those schools, Den, has over seven hundred kids. 'member the war produced orphans."
"Yep."
