Just in case any of you just check in at the end of every week, I did post a chapter on...Monday, was it? Meh. Anyway, make sure you read 37 before reading 38, or it will make very little sense!
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"Ysmir!" Balgruuf greeted her warmly, rising from his throne to welcome her properly. Hrongar looked both relieved and guilty at her appearance, and she wondered just what unreasonable demand one of the children had made this time. "What brings you to Whiterun? Not planning on trapping another dragon, I hope?"
She laughed politely at his jest. "No. Actually, I want to kidnap your children."
Balgruuf stared at her a moment, trying to work out if she were joking. He'd had a hard time telling, since trapping Odahviing. "You're serious," he finally realized. "Why?"
She shrugged. "Because I think a little hard work around people who couldn't care less about their bloodline would do them good." At his continued confliction, she sighed, "Jarl Balgruuf, on the way in here your youngest told me that I did a good job keeping your boots clean with my tongue."
Balgruuf looked horrified, glancing around. The guards, who had leaned their heads together in a conspiratorial manner as soon as she began talking, straightened abruptly. "Why don't we take this to the Porch?" he finally said, heading for the stairs. Hrongar bowed ironically, gesturing her to follow. Vilkas grimaced and followed her, wishing he wasn't party to this. As far as he was concerned, this whole plan was so hair-brained it might as well have been made by Sheogorath.
Frothar was practicing against a dummy when they walked out onto the Porch, and Vilkas looked him over appraisingly. He was built more like his uncle Hrongar than Balgruuf's wiry frame, and he wasn't half bad with a sword. Not as good as Aventus or Runa, but certainly better than Blaise or Alesan. He was nearing fifteen now, Vilkas thought, and by the size of his wrists and knees, he was bound to have a growth spurt within the next year.
The prospective future Jarl noticed his appraisal. "You want to fight, or something?" he asked belligerently, holding up his practice sword.
"I only fight with steel, boy," Vilkas replied equably, moving on. Ahead, Ysmir was having a heated discussion with the Jarl, and by the looks of things she wasn't getting very far, even with Hrongar assisting. Pleased someone else thought this idea preposterous, Vilkas was about to join them when a short, slender form filled with righteous indignation stomped past him and right up to Balgruuf.
"Where is my new dress?" she demanded.
Balgruuf looked harried and irritated. "The shipment it was in was captured in the Rift. I ordered you a new one, but it won't be here for a few weeks."
"A few weeks?" she repeated incredulously. "A few weeks?" she shrieked, stamping. "But I want it now!"
"We can talk about this later, Dagny," he said tiredly.
"I want my dress," she insisted.
"There is nothing I can do to hurry it," he told her, the forbidding look in his eyes finally reaching the girl, who huffed and sulked off. Balgruuf watched her for a long moment before turning to Ysmir. "They'll be safe?"
"Two of my own will be there," she assured him.
He sighed. "Do what you must, Dragonborn."
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She was humming as she descended the stairs into the Wind District. Ysmir was many things, but a bard was not one of them, and he wished she would stop. "I can't believe you're going through with this," he told her seriously.
"Why not? It takes care of Hrongar's problem—which he did ask for help with, by the way—gets Runa somewhere Siddgeir can't find her and gets Aventus somewhere Babette can't find him. Illia gets out of Darklight Tower and Melka gets a sack of bandit eyes for her collection. Everyone wins."
"I can't say I'm quite comfortable handing over a group of children to a Hagraven, no matter how trustworthy," he informed her. "You seem positively gleeful about it."
"You can't tell me you haven't wanted to take those brats down a peg since you've met them," she countered, just as another child rounded the corner between War Maiden's and the empty Breezehome, bumping right into her.
"Hey, watch it!" Braith demanded, scowling up at the Dragonborn before running around her.
Ysmir watched her run off for a long moment. "You know what? I'm going to go talk to Saffir."
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That night, the Dragonsreach guards gleefully carried three drugged children down to the Whiterun stables, followed soon after by Amren with Braith, looking pained. "Are you sure about this, Ysmir?" he asked her quietly, shifting his daughter in his arms. Curled up there, her head resting on his shoulder and her face relaxed in sleep, she hardly looked like the rude little bully she was during the day.
"Do you like the way she's been acting?" the Dragonborn asked him archly, and he winced, shaking his head as he placed his daughter carefully in the padded bed of the carriage.
"Dragonborn!" a voice called, and she turned to see Olfrid Battle-Born striding down the hill with his grandson Lars draped over one shoulder like a sack of grain. "Amren told me you were taking it upon yourself to correct the behavior of our Jarl's spoilt rotten offspring," he said, and she glared at the Redguard briefly before nodding an affirmative. "Well, I want you to take Lars with you. I imagine there will be work and hardship involved? Good. Toughen the little milk-drinker up. Make a true Nord out of him." He deposited Lars's sleeping form non-too-gently next to the others. "Don't know what you used to keep the others out, but I gave him the strongest ale I had. Hope it will do."
Ysmir winced for Lars's sake. "What's wrong with him?" she asked. Personally, she had never had a problem with the boy, who was perhaps a year or so younger than Aventus; about the same age as Sofie. He had always seemed rather soft-spoken and polite.
She realized that might just be the problem when he scowled. "He's a milk-drinker," he repeated. "He doesn't want to fight, spends all his time reading, and lets Amren's little she-daedra push him around like a clawless mudcrab!"
"Hey!" Amren protested, insulted.
Ysmir glanced at Farkas, who cast his eyes upward to where Masser and Secunda made their way across the sky. "We have to get going," she told them. "We'll take Lars, Olfrid, but don't expect a muscle-bound warrior when we get back. Sometimes children just aren't going to be who you want them to, and the sooner you accept that, the happier you both will be."
Turning away from his surprised face, she mounted Jughead and turned him toward the road. "I trust I don't need to tell you two to keep this to yourselves from now on? This will never work if any of them find out it was a trick." Satisfied with their nods, she dismissed them from her mind. "Take care of the others," she called to Aela, who was remaining. Sofie would be staying with the Companions while Argis departed in the morning with Alesan and Darva for Ivarstead. "And make sure Sofie feels useful!"
"She'll be safe at Jorrvaskr," the Huntress assured her. "Tilma already adores her."
The Dragonborn smiled. "I'll bet. All right; let's move!"
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Frothar, eldest son of Balgruuf the Greater, warrior-in-training and future Jarl of Whiterun Hold, was petrified. He had gone to sleep in the room he shared with his brother and awoken in a dank, murky place that stank of mildew. Hard stone lay where his plush mattress of goose feathers once resided, and something dripped on him steadily from the cold stone of the ceiling.
He'd never woken so swiftly in his life.
The boy looked around quickly. He was in a pen of some kind—that much was obvious. His sister and brother still slept on the molded straw covering the floor, shivering in the damp. Dagny's expression was already creased in a disapproving frown; he certainly wasn't looking forward to when she woke up and saw where they were. Two other children he recognized from Whiterun were there as well. He didn't know the girl, but the boy was a Battle-Born, if he recalled correctly. He'd never bothered to learn more.
Carefully pulling himself to his feet, Frothar brushed the straw off his pants and froze, not recognizing the heavy canvas tunic and leather trousers he was wearing. The fur shoes were so thin-soled as to be slippers, and barely protected his feet from the cold of the stone floor, let alone anything else. His brother Nelkir and the Battle-Born boy were similarly outfitted, while Dagny and the Redguard girl wore long, half-sleeved dresses of the same canvas, without even an undergown or over-tunic.
No, he really wasn't looking forward to Dagny's reaction when she awoke.
He cast about as quietly as he could, trying to get his bearings. It was fairly obvious that they had been kidnapped. By who, he had no idea, though one side or the other of the Civil War that had raged most of his life was a good bet.
Well, their "cell"—a simple alcove blocked off by a series of heavy, uneven branches wedged into the floor and ceiling—was about fifteen of his paces wide, and about half that deep. Just as he ascertained this, the Battle-Born boy woke with a gasp.
"Good morning," Frothar told him acidly.
"Where are we?" the boy asked, looking bewildered and clearly showing the fear the older boy had been throttling down. He also winced, holding his head and groaning a moment. Frothar hoped he wasn't going to be sick. He felt a little queasy himself, and his head felt vaguely like someone had stuffed it full of tundra cotton, but Battle-Born looked as if he felt worlds worse.
"Haven't the faintest idea," Frothar replied. "Why don't you get up and make yourself useful helping me figure it out, hm?"
The boy flushed, but rose, gazing about himself curiously. "You're one of the Jarl's children," Battle-Born stated after watching him for a long moment.
"Yes. The other two are still out."
For the first time Battle-Born seemed to notice the others, and his expression became somehow even paler when he noticed the Redguard girl. "Not her," he whispered, as if addressing the Divines. "Why couldn't it have been Mila?"
Frothar raised his eyebrows. "You'd rather wish that than that we were all back in our own beds?"
Battle-Born shrugged, turning to squint out into the faint light of the room beyond their cell. Frothar went back to trying to figure out how to rush whoever entered the cell with the most leverage and no weapons when he heard the boy gulp. "What is it?" he asked.
"There's a Spriggan-head on a pike out there," he said, eyes wide and white in the low lighting.
Interested, Frothar picked his way over his siblings and the Redguard girl to peer out of the cell. "That's neat. I didn't think Spriggans were even real."
Battle-Born shook his head. "They're real, all right. And there's only one thing that I've read about that can do that to them." He swallowed heavily when Frothar looked at him inquiringly, "A Hagraven."
For a moment, the noble boy could only stare at him. Then the sound of his laughter woke the others.
"What happened?" Nelkir demanded.
"Well, according to Battle-Born, we were kidnapped by a Hag," Frothar chortled. Nelkir snorted, then realized that, Hag or not, they most definitely weren't in Dragonsreach anymore.
"Battle-Born, you better not have had anything to do with this," the Redguard girl grumbled, rubbing the shoulder she had been laying on.
He scowled at her even as he backed up a pace. "What could I have done? And why would I? Everyone knows the Hagravens are unpredictable."
"'Everyone' knows the Hags are stories to frighten children into obedience and Nords out of the Reach," Frothar retorted, rolling his eyes.
Battle-Born glowered at him, "You just said you didn't believe in Spriggans, and yet there one is! Or…what's left of one, anyway."
Frothar shrugged. "That could be a carving, for all I know."
Dagny, who had gone right from sleeping to spiteful, looked up from where she had been examining her clothing in acute disgust. Marching past Battle-Born, she stopped at the wooden bars and placed her hands on her hips. "I am the Jarl of Whiterun's daughter and I demand to see whoever is in charge, right now!"
Battle-Born pulled his hands away from his ears and stared at her as if she were insane, backing quickly against the far wall when her words had an instant effect. A tall woman in blue robes and a cowl walked in, carrying a lantern that cast more shadows than light, as far as Frothar was concerned. The dark blankness where her face was shrouded by the hood seemed to stare calmly in Dagny's direction for a long while. So long, in fact, that even Dagny began to shift uncertainly from foot to foot.
"Naughty children," she finally said, making them all jump. "Naughty children of Whitrun, you are now the property of the Hags. You were warned that a Hag would take away those whose misbehavior was severe, and now it has come to pass. You have no one to blame but yourselves." With that—and before Dagny could even close her mouth, which had dropped open in shock—she turned and swept right back out of the room.
The offended, slightly strangled noise his sister made would have been amusing under other circumstances. "W—Well, I never!" she gasped, outraged. Frothar prepared to throw his hands over his ears as her eyes pressed shut, face twisted into the petulant expression that heralded a full-on, shrieking tantrum.
"You never what?" asked a new voice. They all jumped again, none of them having noticed the boy come into the room. He wore what they wore, but he was outside the cage, arms crossed with a bit of a sneer across his face. Perhaps a year or two younger than Frothar, he had wavy black hair and a sardonic look in his eye.
"I've never been so insulted!" she cried shrilly.
He looked her up and down lazily, taking in her bedraggled state and superior posture, as if he could evaluate all she was by doing so. One eyebrow rose. "I'll bet," he replied sardonically.
Dagny's eyes popped back open in shock as she glared around for the second it took her eyes to track on the boy. Then she did the most peculiar thing; rather than screaming, she looked into his expectant, bored expression and said…nothing. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out, and her face slowly turned from porcelain to deep cherry with embarrassment.
High-handed manner aside, Frothar would have loved to ask the boy how he managed that. No one had cut off one of Dagny's tantrums that effectively since their mother died.
The black-haired boy waited another moment, then cast his cool gaze over the rest of them, face still lightly mocking. "Right. Now, what Illia just told you is true—all those scare-baby tales of Hagravens stealing naughty children has come to rest on your heads, and now we all belong to the Hag Melka."
"Even you?" Battle-Born asked sharply.
"Of course. You think I'd stick around a dump like this if I had a choice?" the boy asked scathingly. "I've been here about a month—girl Runa's been here longer than that. We was bad, and now we get to serve the witch 'til she deems that we truly have changed our naughty ways, or she eats us. Only two ways out, right there," he told them, without an ounce of sympathy in his tone.
"What did you do to get in here?" the Redguard girl asked curiously, still sitting in the straw.
The boy shrugged. "Da was a bandit. I used to help lure people into traps by pretending to be lost or hurt." He looked them all over again and sighed, as if very put-upon. "And now I run errands for a witch. That was hard enough before you milk-drinkers showed up. Now Runa and me gotta show you how stuff is done, and do our own chores to boot."
"And you are?" Frothar asked, irritated.
"Name's Ventis," the boy said, pulling a lever that made all the branches abruptly fall to the ground. "Don't much care who you are. You probably won't be around enough for it to matter, anyways."
Dagny's mouth worked again, emitting a bit of a halting squeaking noise, and Nelkir nudged his older brother's side slightly with his elbow. "If he's a sorcerer, do you think he'd teach us whatever he did to Dagny?"
Frothar shrugged. "I doubt it. Right now, we just have to play along until we can find a way out of here, or until rescue comes. Whatever kind of magic these witches have, they won't be able to fight Farengar and a squadron of guards!"
The sound of heavy, rasping breaths interrupted Nelkir's response. The rude boy outside their cage backed away from the door hastily as a strange sound grew nearer—shuffle, scrape click, shuffle, scrape, click—as if something clawed walked ponderously towards them.
"Here they are, Mistress," Ventis said, his tone suddenly deathly polite, fear undercutting every word in a way that made the hair rise on Frothar's neck. When he looked up, he saw that the other boy's fears were completely justified, for there in the door to the room stood a Hag of Legend.
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Hello, everybody! I hope you enjoyed this week's chapter! My life is still crazy: Working retail at Christmas/Holiday Season. You know what they say; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger (or scars you for life and leaves you in therapy, but whatever, I have some bubble wrap).
Thank you to all who reviewed!
Reader: Yes, we see Babette again. That is all I can really say without spoilers, though.
Wicked Lullaby: One kidnapping quest, for your enjoyment. :) Miraak's opinion of the Greybeards pretty much parallels Delphine's in that he thinks they're pretty useless sitting up on their mountain, Shouting at the sky. He might arch an eyebrow and get irritated, but there are worse babysitters.
Wynni: Even the Savior of Skyrim isn't above the law, and after Helgen, Ysmir has been extra careful about following the law (when there are people around, anyway).
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Next Week: Aventus and Runa take the lead in taming the Brats of Whiterun. Meanwhile, Argis and Aela fight each other and a pair of trolls.