Winter was getting closer and closer. The winds were changing, the breezes shifting directions. Azrael, however, felt that on his skin. Any Nord he came across just shrugged nonchalantly when he said something about the cold, but he felt it. He felt the temperature lowering with each day passing by and saw more and more snow piling on top itself. For the first time since his arrival, he had seen the plains around Whiterun covered by a soft blanket of snow. 'It'll melt by the evening,' Ysolda had commented, not fully understanding that Azrael wasn't worried. He was just surprised.
Shadowmere didn't give any sign of distress. She galloped at her usual speed, headstrongly enduring any change in the climate. Lucky you, lass, Azrael had thought, half-way on the road to Solitude. He had slapped her on the side and they kept sprinting towards their destination. The silver lining in all that was the lower amount of outlaws and cutthroats that patrolled the roads. With that cold, they usually kept one man outside as a guard, and most times they didn't bother with a single horseman dashing past their post. They really didn't.
Azrael had wondered how those people survived the winter. 'You're blind, traveler,' a merchant had answered him, upon him asking. 'You should notice the granaries outside and inside the cities. We store the harvests there, and thus we survive the cold.' That explanation had also cleared quite a bit about the attack on Stonehill. Azrael has seen only one building going down, and yet everybody was crying and cursing as if their life had depended on it. Turns out it had. That must have been the granary, burned down by the Stormcloaks.
Upon arriving near the walls of Solitude, Azrael remembered to pay a closer look. However, the city's barn didn't strike him as something which can hold the necessary amount of nourishment to feed the entire population of the capital for months. He was right about to ask, when a cart coming from the docks reminded him. Fish, of course, you idiot. The sea doesn't freeze, he thought with a grin. The wagon was full of clams and fishes, and it was enough to feed a fair amount of people for a fair amount of time.
Azrael never liked Solitude. He never liked it but also never hated it. He just didn't understand it. His memories of Blacklight were completely different. Dunmer generally can't stand crowded places, and they moved harmonically in the city. They fought their distaste with a strange sense of art and order. Everyone faced everyday matters with calm and seriousness. In Solitude, those things were cast aside for disorder, chaos and frenzy. People never stopped running around, talking, screaming, yelling, complaining and getting angry about meaningless things.
When he entered Caste Dour, the atmosphere around him changed suddenly. All the soldier there had gloomy faces and tired expressions. It looked like they breathed a different air then the ones just outside those gates. He expected it, the rumors he had head at the inn were enough to make the assumption. The war wasn't going that good for them. Azrael had then understood Ulfric's confidence a little more. He was presumably negotiating from a very slight position of strength. The legionnaires didn't look too happy with their condition. Some were practicing with the bow, a dozen with the sword and some were just sitting around the bonfire placed in the middle of the courtyard.
Azrael reached the guards standing by the entrance, who indignantly gazed at him.
'What's your business here?' one asked.
Azrael noticed he was a Nord. That was good. He could streamline the message a bit. 'The Greybeards have sent me. The General only can hear them.'
'Greybeards?' asked the other, also a Nord. 'Truly? I thought mundane matters such as war and politics didn't concern them,' he replied sardonically. First Ulfric, then him. There was a bit of resentment towards those eremites. 'And what might they want from the General?'
'Only for the General.'
The soldiers crossed eyes. The eyebrow of the first cocked, but the second just grimaced with annoyance. He turned and nodded at the Assassin. 'You can go in, Elf. General's place's straight forward, can't miss it. Don't do anything stupid.'
Azrael opened the door without saying anything more. He closed it behind him, and then advanced in the passageway that led onward. He could just see a table with a huge map laid on it. Several soldiers were guarding the corridor. The dark bricks that made up the castle darkened the light of the torches and candles, submerging those soldiers in a dim aura. They kept their heads down and rose them only to steal suspicious glances at the Dragonborn passing by.
'Halt,' said the one guarding the last door before the room with the map. 'State your affairs.'
'A proposal for your commander,' answered the Assassin.
'You may enter.'
Azrael stepped into the room, and was greeted by a volley of distrustful stares. A warm light came from the lamp on the ceiling, and the shadow it casted were deep and dark. The Assassin calmly seized everyone up with a cold glare, seeing who reacted and who didn't.
General Tullius, a short man with thin grey hair, stood at the opposite end of the table. The shining armor bore the imperial heraldry. It was awfully clean, so much so that Azrael wondered whether it had ever seen any real battle. His own armor, albeit having been reforged nearly three weeks before, already bore the opaqueness of the cold and the blood stains of the enemies as its heraldry. Azrael didn't see anything wrong with clean armors, but he was personally disappointed.
Beside the General stood a woman. A brown-haired and blue-eyed woman with the pale complexion of a northerner. She was tall, and wore the heavy plate of the Legion; she was clearly at ease in it. Azrael had no idea who she was, but she did inspire a basic trust in him.
There were two soldiers at the sides of the chamber. They both held spears in their right hand with the bottom of the shafts resting on the ground. Nothing too special about them. Finally, very close to him, stood a familiar face. Hadvar, the legionnaire that had helped him escape Helgen. Aedra and Daedra, it's been a long time, Azrael thought while holding back a sneer.
'Greetings, stranger,' said General Tullius, trying his best to be polite. 'What brings you to Castle Dour?'
'I have a message for you, General,' the Assassin said, advancing towards the table.
'And who are you?' asked the woman.
'Wait, General!' Hadvar breathed, looking at the shadowed face of the Dragonborn. 'He is… You are…'
'Yes, Hadvar,' Azrael replied, grinning. 'I see your memory works well. Not everyone would recognize me.'
'What's this about?' asked the woman, rather snappily.
'General, he's the Dark Elf we almost executed ay Helgen,' the young man explained. Tullius looked again at the Dragonbon, and his eyes brightened up. 'He saved my life,' Hadvar continued. 'We should at least hear what he has to say.'
'Yes, yes,' said the General, as memories slowly began to return. 'I remember you. You were saved by the Dragon. I'm sorry for what happened that day. I'm sure you being imprisoned was a terrible misunderstanding. So, what do you wish to ask me?'
'I have a message. On account of the Greybeards.'
The face of everyone in the room went from curious to doubtful in very little time. The two soldiers in particular shifted their heads, which they hadn't moved by a millimeter in the last minute or so, and looked at him astonished. Tullius, not having all the legends and myths behind his knowledge of those man, retained a more neutral behavior.
'The Greybeards?' he said. 'What do those old hermits want with me?'
'They're hosting a peace council at High Hrothgar.'
'Why?' asked the General. His tone suddenly became mocking and skeptical. The word "peace" seemed to have conveyed very negative thoughts. 'There's nothing to discuss as long as that traitor Ulfric is in arms against his rightful Emperor.'
Well… There's no Emperor right now, as far as I know, Azrael thought. He restrained from telling it to him. That phrase of the man wasn't a real verdict, just a fancy way of saying he wouldn't have stopped fighting.
'We need a truce,' insisted the Assassin, 'until the Dragon menace has been dealt with.'
'The Dragon menace is of no concern to us.'
That was way too straight and to be an honest response, beside the fact that it was impossible. Azrael's eyes narrowed. A sneer touched the corners of his lips as he jeered at the Imperial.
'Is it?' he asked dryly. 'Odd. Very odd, even. I remember talking to a merchant, a couple days past. He told me a whole platoon has been found near Robber's Gorge. Incinerated, burned alive by a Dragon. The beast was nowhere to be found. The guards in Whiterun have also warned me about the one that loves to circle around Eldersblood Peak, saying it had killed an imperial patrol.'
The Assassin paused, curling his lips and looking in the eyes of the General. At every new mention, his face had darkened. He wasn't about to change his mind, that was plain to see, but he was conceding ground. All he needed was a little pressure from the others.
The Dragonborn gazed coldly at them. He looked uncaring and uninterested in those things he described, which only increased the sense of conviction and duty in both the woman and Hadvar's gaze. Azrael continued, concluding his argument.
'Those are just a couple of examples,' he said. 'I have four more.'
'General, what he says it's true. Those things have happened. I think we should at least hear what he has to say,' Hadvar said.
'We already heard him out,' stubbornly replied the leader of the Legion. 'Still, I don't see any reason why we should agree.'
'He's talking sense, General,' said the woman. Azrael liked the unyielding tone in her voice. 'We can't deny their existence and the damage they are causing to us.'
'Well, they are getting to be a problem…' the man finally admitted. Azrael suppressed his sly smile. The slightest sign of mock and that pigheaded little man could have changed his mind. For the time being he played along. 'However, you'll all concur that I wasn't sent to Skyrim to fight Dragons. My job is to quell this rebellion.' He pointed at the position of Windhelm on the map. 'I intend to do just that. Dragons or no Dragons.'
Azrael pinched his eyebrows. 'The Empire can't afford to snub the Greybeards.'
'He's right, General.' Hadvar seemed to agree with nearly everything the Dragonborn said. Azrael wasn't so sure the Dovahkiin thing hadn't reached Solitude. Maybe it had, and they were just silently playing his game without him knowing.
General Tullius, however, wasn't a Nord and couldn't care less about it. 'Do you understand that this is not something I can't afford to do? Most of the Legion is tied down on the border with the Aldmeri Dominion. The Emperor can't afford to risk weakening Cyrodiil's defenses. From the Imperial City, our war here is just a sideshow. An interlude before the main event against the Thalmor resumes.' The General stopped for a moment. A soldier had entered the building, with probably something important to say. The General gestured him to wait, and continued. 'We can't do it. The rebels need to be smashed quickly and without any truces in between. That will be it.'
'General,' intervened the woman, 'ignoring the Dragon threat is out of the question. We…'
'Silence, Rikke,' ordered the man. 'I'll not hear a word from you. You Nords and your bloody sense of honor… Do you know how making a truce works? It's diplomacy, and diplomacy is best done from a position of strength. We're not in one right now. The Stormcloaks are driving us back, and we still have no idea which side Whiterun's on. No more,' he settled, 'matter's over. What did you need, Captain?' he asked at the soldier that had entered.
'Jarl Elisif the Fair wishes to speak with you, sir.'
An awkward silence permeated the room. Azrael bit his lip and shook his head imperceptivity in disbelief. That woman learned quickly enough for his tastes, and that managed to surprise him to the point of planting a sting of envy and irritation in his throat. Things he rarely, if ever, felt. The Legionnaires were all confused or disoriented by the announcement. Hadvar gulped nosily and looked at his two superiors for help. General Tullius shrugged, but he was thrown off too.
'She may enter,' he answered. He then turned to the Assassin. 'I think the matters of the Jarl don't concern you, Elf. Leave us, and consider yourself lucky I didn't put you in chains again.'
The door opened. Azrael rose his eyebrows and leered balefully at the short man. His eyes blazed red. 'I'll get my way. I always do. Farewell, for the time being.'
'You're not going anywhere, Azrael,' came the giggle from behind. The voice of Elisif. 'This involves you more than anyone in this place.'
Out of the six people standing in the room, five froze on the spot. The one remaining, a certain Dunmer, leaned against the wall, shaking with laughter.
Elisif the Fair strode in room, walking swiftly. She was alone. Her housecarl probably awaited her at the exit but hadn't follow her inside. She wore a long dress of the exact same blue of her eyes. She was simply stunning. Her hair were carefully combed; a small braid tilted gently on the rest of her hair. A long, silky chestnut wave that dangled softly down her back.
She approached Azrael way too much for it to be coincidence. He stood still, wanting to see how far she was going to expose herself. Mildly, and in no way excessively. She simply rose on the tip of her toes, since he was at least a head taller than her, and branded a warm kiss on his bearded cheek. Her lips touched the rough skin of the scar, but she didn't care. She was utterly satisfied with what she had done and how she had done it. The Assassin saw it in her gaze, and looked down at her with a wry but tender look. She planted her feet firmly beside him, under the cover of his shadow.
'My Jarl, what…' Tullius tried to say, but his voice quavered and his lips trembled.
'General, you are going to hear me out,' she said, abandoning her smiling self for a moment and assuming her usual somber tone, although it wasn't exactly the same. It was more confident, more assertive and way more severe. It was strange coming from her, such hard conviction carried by a voice so soft. 'You'd have to be out of your mind to refuse an offer from the Greybeards. Do you even know what would happen if you did? I wager half of your men would turn to the Stormcloaks. There's no excuse for not answering their call.'
'With all due respect, my Jarl…'
'Silence,' she imperatively said, cutting him off. 'This treaty has to be signed. It will only bring the Legion advantages, and if not, at least to the people it defends.'
'Your sympathy for the rebels doesn't interest me, Elisif,' Tullius retorted. 'You're not supposed to take decisions on the matters the Legion.'
Elisif put both her hands on her hips and hissed like an angry cat. 'For once, I don't sympathize with the rebels. Their leader murdered my husband, do you remember that? Second, I'm not meddling with the affairs of the Legion, I'm just giving you some friendly advice. You don't know these lands, and in spite of that you never peak your nose out this castle. You don't know what happens outside, and outside something fairly important is happening.'
'Let's hear some good old Nord wisdom. What did the prophecy foretell this time?'
'No prophecy. The wind told us that: Winter. Winter is near.'
Tullius was caught off guard. 'Winter?' he asked, confused. 'And what should the season passing mean to me?'
'That's exactly what I mean,' she said, opening her arms as if saying "plain to see", or something else that described obvious things. 'You know nothing of these lands. Let me tell you about winter in Skyrim. Temperature drops, so low that even one of us would die if exposed to the cold. Winds blow from the North, carrying the frigid gales of the Sea of Ghosts with them. Snow falls, and at times it reaches twice a tall man's height. The roads become nearly impossible to travel, and all connection between the cities ceases almost completely.'
'This is all very poetic,' replied the General, still not convinced, 'but how should this help me?'
'Legionaries will never be able to move. Almost all communications will be blocked, since horses usually don't endure an entire day of exposure to the cold of those months. Your soldiers, trained methodically by your best quartermasters, will never be able to face the winter. Ulfric, on the other hand, has different kind of men by his side. Those fighters have been raised here in Skyrim. Even in the most freezing of winters, they'll be able to move around and do as they please. So I repeat, and I hope it's clearer this time. During the cold season, the balance of the war will only worsen. There is no way to avoid this, General.'
'Your arguments seem reasonable, Elisif,' he conceded. 'However, I still see no way out of this.'
'We sign that truce and await for the spring to come,' plainly explained the woman named Rikke. 'The Jarl's right. This is our best option.'
'There is something more that could be done.'
All eyes turned at Azrael. The Assassin looked at ease even with the attention of the whole audience directed at him. He took a deep breath and then looked at Elisif sideways. 'Correct me if I say something wrong,' he said.
'Be sure of it,' she answered.
'There is something more the Legion could do,' Azrael began. 'The rebels are strong and brave, and they almost even you out in number. But there's one thing they don't have, and that is organization, bureaucracy, a thriving economy. They live by the day, and are happy with it.'
'Where are you going with this economy lecture?'
'While the truce is on, you could focus on improving the income and bolstering the market. Then, when spring comes, you'll have the resources needed to eradicate this rebellion once and for all. Does that sound reasonable, or is it just me?'
'You make a good point,' said Elisif. 'There are a few things we could do in Solitude. If the war stops soon, we'll be able to begin the activities before the snow piles on us. We could also try and interrupt the trade routes that lead the cities supporting the rebellion.'
'The group stationed in the Pale can handle that, can't it Legate?' asked Hadvar to Rikke.
'It can,' she answered. 'I'll give the orders, and sent messengers…'
'Wait a minute!' yelled the General. 'Stop making plans and taking decisions! I am in charge!'
A quizzical smile played out on Elisif's lips, and she slowly walked towards the General. He looked at her with a confused look, and withdrew a bit when she placed her hand on the map, very close to his. She widened her smile, which went from amused to downright disarming.
'You just let Nords handle their own business, will you?'
'I… I…'
Elisif tenderly caressed the rough cheek of the man. 'Good boy.'
Azrael was the first to laugh. He sniggered heartily. The scene was so amusingly pathetic that everyone else in the room, soldiers included, started laughing under their breath. They, in spite of themselves, kept smiling until Elisif slowly backed away and returned by Azrael's side, resting her head on his arm without any kind of scruples about etiquette. That had been broken as soon as those men started laughing of their commander. Tullius blushed vividly. Never in his life he had been humbled in such a way, and never by a twenty-two years old woman.
'So, kinsmen and kinswomen,' Elisif said, with a newfound and charming personal allure that Azrael had never seen in her before. 'Let's do something good about our land. First things, sign this truce, and second thing, win this war. General, Rikke, you'll come to the peace council with me. We'll make those rebels bow. For Skyrim.'
'For Skyrim!'
Azrael struggled to recognize her. The woman with that grin on her lips, that straight posture and welcoming expression wasn't the shy, serious woman he knew as Elisif. She was another person entirely. Another small detail that he had noticed was about the dress she wore. Normally, her clothing was kind of loose. It floated around her like a mage robe or a tunic. The garb she donned, however, was quite close-fitting. It traced and revealed her slim figure and harmonious curves.
It felt as if she was ashamed to show her body before. Now she didn't. Not in any vulgar way, but she had lost that slight quantity of discretion that used to distinguish her from most other women. Azrael was no expert, but he remembered a short discussion he had led with the owner of the Radiant Raiment, there in Solitude. 'Any clothes you wear should be tailor-fitted with precision,' the Altmer had told him.
'To what end?' he had asked.
'Why, highlight the vigorous shapes of your body!' she had exclaimed, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
As he had done back then in the shop, Azrael instinctively looked at his biceps and forearms. They were big, really big. The formers because of the bow and the latters because of the wristwork he did with his blades. He never gave it too much importance, all he asked of his muscles to that they'd save him when the need arose. But, since he needed those anyway, it didn't hurt to look muscular. Or, at least, that was the idea that had stuck in his head after that brief conversation.
Never hide the shape of your body. That was the message. He presumed it went the same for females.
'Thank you for convincing that old guy to stop the war,' Elisif said.
'You thank me?' he asked, grinning bleakly. 'I was under the impression you saved my sorry hide.'
'Hadn't it been for you, we wouldn't have ended up anywhere. I would have never managed to go to Tullius and explain those things to him. It would look out of place, and more importantly would mean meddling with his beloved Legion affairs. But like we did a moment ago? Not a problem. We outplayed him. We disciplined him, and the Legion, for good.'
'And they won't be underestimating you for a long while, now. Really showed your claws today.'
'I wanted to. I had the guards at the gate inform me if you walked in the city. As soon as they reported back, I ran to Castle Dour.'
'Did Falk give you any trouble?'
She looked at him with a cheerful look. 'No,' she said serenely. 'The man has grown accustomed to treating me different since… Well…' She looked at him knowingly. 'Since we last saw each other.'
'I remember,' he grinned. 'Don't need to remind me of that. I'm quite surprised, honestly.'
'That's quite a feat.'
'It is. It really is.'
They were silent for a time. The few people that crossed their paths looked astonished at them. Azrael laughed at their naivety and their solid bonds to habit, while Elisif was loving every moment of it. She had dreamt of being different all her life, but being different usually comes with its downsides. Now, it didn't seem to come with any. She walked at the side of someone she treasured and that didn't bring any shame to her. An assassin? Who cares, people aplenty murder for a living. Maybe not the typical and beautiful Nord? She didn't care. Azrael was extremely attractive, although in a dark, enigmatic way.
'Are you riding to High Hrothgar?' she asked.
'Of course I am. I want to get there before everything starts heating up.'
'May I come with you?'
'Can you endure two, maybe three days of riding?'
'With you at my side, yes.'
Azrael winked at her.
'We leave at dawn.'
