18 Heartfire 4E201, Windhelm
Ivar and Rayya walked through the Windhelm gates, just as Stormcloak guards prepared to close them for the night.
"Such a bleak place," murmured Rayya.
"Windhelm is all stone and ice," Ivar agreed. "There's always a cold wind here, coming down off the northern sea. The growing season is short, so the people mostly live by fishing, herding, and hunting. Not to mention going a-viking in the hard years."
"A hard country breeds hard people," she said. "I begin to understand you Nords more, seeing places like this."
The market square was in process of closing for the night, but Ivar found the best smithy still open. Rayya watched as he traded with the smiths, exchanging coin and some scraps of dwarven metal for iron and corundum to be shipped back to Falkreath. She smiled inwardly as she listened to their talk, half boasting and half serious exchange of technical lore. Ivar seemed satisfied as they walked away.
"Never met that Oengul before, but he seems much like my father," he remarked.
She cocked her head at him in curiosity. "What was your father like?"
"Ragnar Sigurdsson." Ivar smiled. "Tough man. Well, you have to be if you're a smith. He kept his opinions to himself, but he certainly had them, and you couldn't move him an inch if he set his face against what you were doing. Patient, though, and a better teacher you could not find. He taught me . . . well, perhaps not everything I know, but enough to survive and prosper as a man, and no son could ask for more than that."
"Where is he now?"
The smile on Ivar's lips faded. "Dead, the poor man, and a straw-death at that. A weakness in his limbs and a canker of the lungs, after breathing the fumes of so many strange metals in his forge. I thank the Divines that he lived to see me a man, but I wish they had not forced him to suffer so in his last year."
"You've had no family ever since?" she asked, careful not to show any sign of pity.
"No. My mother died bearing me . . . that would have been during the fighting around the Imperial City, at the end of the Great War. The imperial camp was no place for a woman with child, but as my father told it, she was even more stubborn than he, and refused to flee to safety. Not that anywhere seemed safe in those days. My father never told me of other kin, and he never took another wife as long as he lived." Ivar shrugged. "You'll always have to stand on your own two feet, he told me many times. That will be hard, and there will be none to help you shoulder the blame if you fail, but at least your victories will be your own."
"I think he was wrong," Rayya said quietly.
Ivar gave her a sharp glance. "How so?"
"You may have no kin, but any honorable man can have friends and allies."
"True enough." He said no more, but his mood seemed less grim.
"Here we are," she observed, changing the subject.
The two of them stepped up into Candlehearth Hall. There Ivar arranged for a room for the night, bed and board and access to the bath-house for both of them. They changed out of their war-gear, washed and dressed in city clothes, and made their way back down to the common room.
Salmon steaks, hearty dark bread with butter, bitter greens for a salad, mugs of nut-brown ale, all of it fuel for the forge. The two of them had been on the road for a very long day, marching all the way from Ivarstead to the far northeast. Ivar ate and drank, and began to feel somewhat human once more.
Rayya's eyes glittered in the firelight as she watched the rest of the company, listening to their talk without seeming to take an interest.
"The people here are very fond of their jarl," she observed after a time, her voice pitched carefully not to travel.
"For good reason," said Ivar. "He's given them good lordship ever since his father died . . . and the Bear was a popular jarl too."
"You sound as if you approve of him, my thane. I'm surprised."
"What, that I might find good in a man leading a revolt against the Empire?" Ivar shrugged, keeping his own voice low. "I may have served the legions in my time, but I can still see the Empire's weakness. Titus Mede might have worked miracles, driving the Dominion back from the Imperial City, but afterward he surrendered too much to them. He's not going to be able to defend us, and Divines only know what will happen once he dies with no clear heir. I wouldn't have done what Ulfric has done, but I have no quarrel with him. I revere Talos and despise the Thalmor, just as he does."
"That's good!" boomed a deep voice, from a few feet away.
Rayya's eyes widened. She almost went for her belt knife, until Ivar's hand clamped down on her forearm.
Behind Ivar three men loomed tall, all Nords, all armed and armored.
Ivar spoke mildly, but remained very still. "We're having a private discussion, friends. No need for you to intrude."
"Have no fear, brother." The foremost of the three took a half-step closer, giving Ivar a grim smile through his beard and a network of livid scars. "You may be fool enough to talk politics out in the open, but at least it's the right politics."
Ivar slowly released Rayya's arm, leaned back in his chair, still careful not to let his hands go near anything sharp or pointed. "Then what is your business with me?"
"You're Ivar Ragnarsson, the one who men call Dragonborn?"
Ivar nodded.
"Good. I'm Galmar Stone-Fist. Housecarl to the rightful High King of Skyrim. Jarl Ulfric wants to see you."