GROWING UP FAST
Gale
"Stay in the room," he'd said before they'd all left for the Shrine of Talos.
It was one of the first orders his dad had given him since... well, becoming his dad. Mom had Gale promise to follow the simple instruction, and to not open the door for anyone. Gale knew the caution came from the long morning and early afternoon full of deception and blood. He knew Markarth was the most corrupt place in Skyrim, next to Riften. He knew there was a good chance the Silver-Bloods or the Forsworn—maybe even both—would try to retaliate.
He reluctantly followed the instructions, wishing instead he'd been allowed to go to the shrine too. I'm not defenseless; I wish they would believe me. Trying to make the time pass faster, he sat down and attempted to read. His literacy had improved, though not as quickly as he'd been hoping. His parents assured him he was doing well, considering he'd never even known how to write his own name (back when it was Samuel), but he couldn't tell if they were just saying that to comfort him.
Taking Aunt Katjaa's advice to read aloud, and with no one to hear him in case he messed up, he picked up a book and cracked it open. "Y-y-ana was per... pre... presi... presicily?" He'd never heard the word before, a clear indication he'd invented it. He pushed forward, ignoring the evident mistake. "The... king—no, kind—of... stuh... study her men... ment... mentor—"
Seeing the next word and not having a single clue what it was, he sighed in defeat and tossed the book on his bed. The ten minutes he'd needed to get only halfway through the first sentence in the book didn't help his confidence.
Deterred but not completely hopeless, he tried again on another book, this time choosing one Mom had read to him several times. He was certain by already knowing the words to the story, reading it himself would be much easier.
He believed that, up until another fifteen minutes passed by and he'd barely gotten past the second sentence. Angrily throwing the book across the room, he begrudgingly refused to pick up another one for the rest of the night. He didn't know what to do now. Dad said it'd take them about an hour to get there and back, so they're probably just getting to the Shrine.
When his stomach growled, Gale decided what he could do.
Gale scavenged through his dad's pack, careful to leave it looking seemingly untouched as he searched for some Septims. They told me not to leave the room, but they also wouldn't want me going hungry, obviously. And there's fresh food just down the hall...
At last he found a small coinpurse. Gale wasn't a great reader—or even good enough to be considered bad at it—but he'd taught himself to count to a certain degree. He swiped what he considered enough Septims to pay for a small meal and returned the coinpurse and the pack back to their original places.
Just because he knew they'd want him to, he tucked his elven dagger into his belt, hiding it underneath his shirt.
Slipping out of the bedroom and into the heart of the inn, Gale approached the bar. The innkeeper, an older Nord with long grey hair on the sides of his head but none in the center, eyed the child curiously as the coins were dumped in front of him.
The Nord arched a brow. "Customers usually order something before they give me their money."
"I don't know what you have," Gale said. "Just give me something that I can afford." Seven years of the witch Grelod the Kind, eating only tasteless, stale food once a day—if she was feeling merciful—had prevented him from becoming a picky eater.
The Nord shrugged, pocketed the coins, and looked to a woman his age who'd watched the entire exchange. "Make the kid some soup," he ordered sternly.
She frowned, muttered something under her breath, and disappeared into the kitchen.
Gale waited for his food at a table off in the corner of the dining area, opposite the hallway he'd emerged from moments ago. He was out of direct sight but was positioned perfectly to see the door to the inn. That way, if his parents or someone else from the group got back sooner than he'd expected, he might have a chance to sneak back into the room before they discover he's missing.
A few minutes later the woman returned with a steaming bowl of tomato soup and a chunk of bread. She laid it and a wooden spoon in front of Gale. "There you go, dear," she said.
"Thank you," Gale said sincerely. If the smell was any indication, the soup would not be a case of eating simply for the need to eat.
He wasted no time devouring the red broth, which amazingly tasted better than it smelled. The bread was a little tough, but it softened when he soaked it in the soup.
The door to the inn opened from the outside as Gale scraped the bottom of the bowl for the last of the soup. He pushed out his chair, ready to run to the room. He relaxed when he saw a couple of Markarth guards had entered instead of someone he knew. They walked with a steady determination from the door into the corridor that led to the rooms for rent. Looks like somebody's in trouble.
A little while later Gale returned his empty bowl to the older woman, thanked her again for the food, and started back to the room. He'd still be there alone for twenty minutes or so, but at least he'd be alone with a full stomach.
He expected to run into the guards at some point when he entered the corridor. His and his parent's room was the furthest down the hall, with Lydia's and Kharjo's being the two closest. But they were nowhere to be found, and there was no evidence they'd even come down this way.
Up until the last three rooms finally came into view, and he saw all three doors were open.
He tiptoed up to and looked inside Lydia's room. The room had clearly been searched. The sheets and pillows from her bed were now on the floor, and her pack had been emptied onto the bare mattress. Clothes, blankets, rations and other supplies were scattered randomly across it. Kharjo's room was the same situation.
The question was, why had they been searched?
He could hear the guards in the process of tearing apart his room before he saw them. With two beds and three packs to turn over, the mess was an eyesore. One guard was riffling through the belongings while another was on his hands and knees looking underneath a bed.
Groaning as he slowly got to his feet, the guard said, "The kid's not here."
"He's got to be," said the other guard, skimming through one of Dad's journals then chucking it over his shoulder. "He wasn't seen leaving the inn, and there's no backdoor to the place."
"You know Thronar's going to have our heads if we leave any loose ends," the first guard told the second. "Or he'll have us tossed in Cidhna Mine with Madanach and the rest of the Forsworn, like he did to the outsiders."
Gale covered his mouth to stifle a gasp. He had no doubt they were talking about his parents, Lydia, and Kharjo. What is going on? And why do they want me?
The answer to that question came from the first guard. "We'll find him. And when we do, his little body will be floating in the Karth River."
Gale backed away from the door so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. He recovered and continued retracing his steps, never taking his eyes off the door. Once he was sure they wouldn't hear him, he doubled his pace and ran out of the corridor, through the dining area, and out the exit into the dark streets of Markarth. He stopped to catch his breath, not sure where to go now. His parents and friends were in prison, there was an order out for his head, and all he had on him was the shirt on his back and a dagger on his belt.
Part of him felt like crying, but he couldn't find the tears. He wished the group had never split up, that Weylin would have put off attempting to kill Margret until they'd already left for Sky Haven Temple.
He dared to wonder if things could get any worse.
"You there, boy!" called out a third guard heading his way from across the street. One hand was pointing at Gale.
The other was on the hilt of his sword.
Gale took off, moving as quickly as his legs allowed, deeper into Markarth. He could hear the guard speed up behind him, which only spurred Gale to go even faster. He didn't know where he was going, only that he wanted to be anywhere else.
Markarth was a strange city to Gale. He wasn't used to streets and alleyways sloping up and down at varying angles. With Riften, he'd know the best places to hide or the most obscure paths pursers wouldn't be able to follow him into. Here, however, he simply tried to twist and turn in as many different directions as often as possible. All while trying to maintain his balance on the rough roads and the bizarre inclines and declines.
But no matter where he went, he could always hear the clash of metal against stone trailing him. The voice of his death, yelling at him to stop.
Besides himself and the guard, Gale saw no one in the streets. He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing.
Gale didn't know how long he'd been running, or even where in the city he was at, but he knew he was getting tired. An increasingly painful burning in his legs and lungs forced him to slow down more and more with each passing minute. The guard was getting closer.
Faced with no alternative, he decided to finally put his combat training to the test.
The next alley that he ducked into, Gale pressed himself against the wall and unsheathed his dagger. His hand shook violently, and his chest rose and fell faster than before even though he'd stopped running. He knew he had no choice, but why was he more scared than ever?
He didn't have long to come up with an answer. The guard neared the alleyway sooner than he'd expected. Gale stuck out his leg and tripped the guard. He collapsed face-first to the ground. Gale shouted as he dropped down and stabbed the blade into the Nord's neck.
Except the guard recovered quicker than Gale'd anticipated, and moved to where the dagger harmlessly bounced off his chainmail. He spun, backhanding Gale with an armored gauntlet. Taken by surprise and blinded by the pain, Gale dropped his dagger.
The guard pulled out his sword and lunged at Gale's head in one swift move.
Gale never saw the strike.
In wake of realizing his weapon was gone, he'd stooped down to pick it up. Narrowly, and completely by accident, he dodged the steel longsword by mere inches. He came back up, brandishing his dagger, and thrust it through the bottom of the guard's helmet, into the exposed flesh. Blood sprayed across Gale's face and seeped down his arm.
The guard shoved him away and ripped out the dagger, releasing a thicker current of blood spurting in sync with his hastening heart rate. He released his sword and applied pressure to the wound with both hands, but the damage was done; too much blood had been lost. Restoration magic or a potion to mend the flesh was his only hope, and he didn't have access to either.
"Little... bastard," he cursed weakly as he dropped to his knees.
Moments later, Gale gaped at the dead man and his pool of blood. He'd seen people die before—one of his most vivid memories was his father slicing the throat of Grelod the Kind, almost two years earlier. But to know that this Nord, who likely had a family and people who depended on and loved him, had died by his own hand. What if the man had been someone's father? Had Gale made a once innocent child an orphan, made a once loving wife into a grieving widow, with a single action he'd not even thought twice about doing? Who was he to decide who lived and who died? Maybe this had been his time to go, but instead he defied his destiny and passed it on to somebody who had more to live for.
"The first time you take someone's life, it changes you," Dad had said earlier that morning, what felt like a lifetime ago. "You're never the same again."
Apparently Dad had been telling the truth. Gale felt something stirring inside him. Rising from his stomach, up through his throat, into his mouth...
And that something was his tomato soup, which did not taste as good the second time as he threw it up in the middle of the alleyway. His vision blurred, tears he couldn't find when outside the inn were forming and falling as he hurled again and again.
He didn't stop even after his stomach was empty, dry heaving a few times before the retching finally ceased.
He was drained in every sense of the word. He wanted to sit down and never move from his position. Wait for another guard to come around to finish the job the dead man in front of him had meant to do, and allow him or her to do so. Or simply wither away and die, leaving behind just a spot on the ground, and one day be forgotten entirely, as if he'd never existed. That's what Samuel would do.
But he wasn't Samuel anymore. He was Maximus Galileo Valentine III, and that meant something.
It meant he had a family. It meant he had a mother and father and friends who were either on their way to the toughest prison in Skyrim or were already there. It meant he had to be brave despite his fears. It meant he couldn't be weak.
Gale wiped his face, gathering sweat, blood not his own, and his dinner on his sleeve. When he pulled his arm away, he bore a determined expression.
It meant he had to get into Cidhna Mine.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Nuclearwullfs, RaptorZeroOne, DynturaDJ, Unslaad Grohiik, Someone, Productive faffer, AmongUsAll, Montigo66, Zikarn Krais, Arcane48, eXa12, JM38LACK, Lord rage quit, Winter's Sentinel, CoolAsIce, BlueWho, blloodxbloods, Bellmak, Dragonbornwanderer and Zane Tribal Tyne Alexandros for reviewing since the last actual update. Special thanks to Gairi for beta-reading.
