Loredas, 10th of Hearthfire, 4E202
The Gildergreen was bigger than Deirdre had thought possible for a tree in the heart of a city. The trunk was so thick it would have taken four of her to stretch their arms all the way around it. It sat in a perfect circle of lush grass, which would probably turn brown in the coming weeks. The area was encircled by a crosshatch fence, and then again by the clear streams of an aqueduct that flowed down from Dragonsreach and continued into the lower levels of the city. When Deirdre asked where the water came from, Aela pointed up at the towering palace—looming much, much closer now that they were in the Cloud District—and told her that long ago, it had been built atop an active spring.
The Gildergreen's fence had a small swinging gate on the side facing the Temple of Kynareth, as only the head priestess was allowed to tread on the sacred ground above the tree's roots. The fence was low enough that even Deirdre could have easily climbed over it and approached the tree, but the whole square was so peaceful, and the atmosphere so reverent, that she wouldn't have dared.
"The blossoms are really pretty," she said, gazing up at the branches above them. "I thought trees only bloomed in the spring."
"This one blooms twice a year," Aela replied. "Spring and fall. But it'll go barren once the snows start."
"That's too bad."
"Nah. It'd get old if we saw this all year round." She glanced about. There were several people walking through the square, though far fewer than there had been in the lower districts, and it was much quieter. Seeing that no one was looking, Aela hopped the stream, stepped up the Gildergreen's fence, and reached over to pluck a fallen blossom off the ground.
Deirdre crossed one of the little bridges over the stream. "Are you allowed to do that?"
"Sure. Why not?"
Aela brought the pilfered petals to her nose and sniffed. "Sometimes Pure-Spring makes smelly stuff out of the flowers and sells it to the fine ladies around here. They get to feel sanctimonious about it because they're supporting the temple."
Perfume, Deirdre thought. A wave of longing swept in and out of her. She peered up at the violet-pink blossoms fluttering gently on their dark branches. She wondered if she'd ever enjoyed the luxury of perfume.
"Here," Aela said, holding out the blossom. Deirdre accepted it carefully, and lifted it to her nose. It smelled clean, a little spicy like soap, and was sweetly floral.
She sighed. "I wonder how much it costs. Camilla would love something like that for her birthday."
"More than you can afford, village girl," Aela said. "Unless you get any prize money from the tournament and decide to waste it."
"What do you spend your prize money on?"
Aela scoffed. "What else? I buy everyone at the Bannered Mare a round of drinks. And then some."
She grabbed Deirdre by the shoulders and turned her around, urging her back over the little bridge. "But enough about money and trees. Let's go find Vilkas and bother him."
Deirdre slipped the blossom into the pocket of her dress and let Aela push her toward a tall set of old stone steps. At the top sat a huge wooden building, clearly ancient, and yes, the roof looked like an overturned boat. Small sections of the roof had weathered away to leave holes in the timbers, which had been patched without efforts to disguise the patches. On either side of the top step sat two metal braziers, currently unlit. A large wooden shield, with a howling wolf carved into its surface, had been mounted above the metal-studded double doors.
Aela kicked one of these doors open when they reached the top, the motion appearing practiced. Deirdre wondered how she didn't break her foot.
The second they stepped into the shadowed entrance, a furious shout rose up from the room. Two grappling bodies plunged to the floor several feet ahead. Deirdre froze.
Aela tsked and pushed her forward, closer to the left side of the room where the floor dropped into a distinct rectangular area, and where two wrestlers were locked in a heated struggle.
"Looks like Athis is getting his ass handed to him again," Aela said.
A skinny Dark Elf male and a larger Nord female were apparently attempting to break each other's limbs in what Deirdre could only call a sparring pit. They were both dressed plainly, almost matching, their tunics similar to the one Aela had on. On the other side of the sparring pit sat a long table with bench seats that stretched across the greater part of the length of the room, where a few spectators were either sitting or leaning. She counted a cheering young woman with dark hair, a scary bald man with an ugly scar across one eye, and a blond man holding a mug to his lips as he studied the fight.
"Show some backbone, Athis!" the dark-haired woman called.
"He's got no chance," said the blond.
The bald man raised his head to see Aela and Deirdre. Aela nodded at him and Deirdre almost shrank. The eye with the scar seemed unusually pale, and he did not even attempt a smile.
He returned his attention to the sparring pit and announced, in a gravelly voice, "Just finish it, Njada."
As if waiting for this cue, the Nord woman, Njada, seized her opponent in a surge of strength, flipped him on his stomach, and pinned his limbs in place. He thrashed this way and that to test if he was truly stuck. He started spewing obscenities. Njada beamed in triumph as he dropped his face to the floor.
"Thought you said you'd been working on it."
"Rub it in," he snapped.
The dark-haired woman at the table gave a few obligatory claps as the pair in the sparring pit separated, both of them staying on the floor to catch their breath. Then the dark-haired woman looked up to see Aela and Deirdre. Her face lit with interest.
"Brought a friend, Aela?"
The others all turned toward Aela and Deirdre.
"Huntress is always bringing home new creatures for supper," said the blond man. He chuckled at his own joke before taking a swig from his mug.
Aela slung an arm over Deirdre's shoulders. "This is that kid from Riverwood who challenged me to the tournament," she claimed, and Deirdre threw her a disapproving look because, if anything, it had been the other way around.
Recognition passed over most of the eyes trained on Deirdre. "Vilkas's damsel in distress?" said Njada, leaning back on her hands.
Deirdre winced. The dark-haired woman and the blond man snickered.
"Don't tell me you've come to make an honest man out of him," teased the blond.
The woman reached over and punched his shoulder. "We don't accept brides as a form of payment."
"They'd have to legalize polygamy if we did," he replied. "The twins'd be up to their eyeballs in—"
"Those frostbite spiders are nasty creatures," interrupted the Dark Elf, Athis, sitting up properly and rotating an arm in its socket. He nodded at Deirdre, serious. "I hear the venom is agony."
Deirdre nodded back, liking the acknowledgment better than the teasing. They didn't really think she was there to see Vilkas, did they? She wasn't so wide-eyed that she'd become infatuated with a man just for saving her life. If she were, she'd have pined after Ralof. Or Ulfric Stormcloak. She suppressed a laugh at the thought.
"Right, well, introductions," Aela announced. She jostled Deirdre. "This is Deirdre, from Riverwood. That skinny loser is Athis, and the shrew is Njada." She pointed at the two on the floor in order. "Over there is Torvar, already into his cups, and our only Imperial, Ria." Torvar shrugged and Ria smiled. "And that ugly thing is Skjor. He's another member of the Circle, and he's meaner than he looks."
Skjor leaned back against the table and crossed his arms, lifting the brow over his bad eye.
"You call those introductions?"
Njada added, "You made us sound horrible."
"You want me to lie?"
Njada, Athis, Torvar and Ria all simultaneously began to tell her what they wanted her to do, and Aela promptly ignored them. She took Deirdre by the sleeve and towed her around the sparring pit, leading her to a wooden back door.
"Bet the twins are out back," she explained. Deirdre waved an awkward goodbye to the still-complaining Companions as Aela kicked the door open and dragged her outside.
The yard behind Jorrvaskr was enormous, walled off on the opposite side so that it didn't have contact with the rest of the city. Weapons racks stood to either side of Deirdre, lining the back wall of Jorrvaskr underneath the awning that stretched the length of the building. She would have paused to let herself be impressed by the sheer number and variety of deadly objects, had there not been another fight to focus on.
Two fully armored men were swinging swords and circling each other in the yard. It took Deirdre a moment to realize she was seeing two Vilkases, dark-haired and huge, because they were moving inhumanly fast. The speed with which their greatswords flew belied their size and weight. Her jaw dropped.
Aela let them stand there and observe. The men were completely absorbed in their duel, anticipating each other's movements with such accuracy, it was clear they'd done this many times.
After a moment, Deirdre realized one of them was actually bigger than the other. He swung slower, and hit harder, while his opponent seemed to move more creatively. She watched him feint twice, and while the bigger fighter saw him coming, he didn't respond with feints of his own.
She didn't know anything about fighting techniques, but it was fascinating how much she could tell just by watching—and it was a little frightening how hard they struck each other's armored bodies. Presumably, this exercise only amounted to play. How vicious could they get if they were serious?
Aela seemed to grow bored when she realized the duel wasn't winding down. She cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed, "HEY, BOYS!"
The larger man paused and looked their way. Deirdre let out a noise and pointed at his opponent, but it was too late. An initial blow knocked one hand away from his two-handed sword, and a second strike ripped the weapon entirely from his grip. He was unarmed before Deirdre could blink, a sword pointed to his chest. He held up both hands in surrender.
As the victor stepped back and lowered his sword, Aela nudged Deirdre and walked into the yard.
"Looks like you've got a focus problem," Aela sighed, shaking her head.
The two men turned to give her identical expressions of, "Really, Aela?" Then they noticed Deirdre.
Deirdre recognized Vilkas for himself now that she was closer. So the larger opponent was actually someone else, and he was bigger than Vilkas, which boggled her mind.
She smiled at Vilkas in greeting but let her eyes dart back and forth between him and the man she could only assume was his brother. The brother's hair was longer, perhaps a shade lighter, and his nose was a bit wider, as was his face in general. But on the whole they could have been twins.
Oh.
"You are twins," she said accidentally, recalling that Aela had just used the word.
Vilkas huffed in a way that was almost a laugh. He leaned on his greatsword like it was a walking stick. "Hello to you as well. Forgot you were going to be in town."
Deirdre colored. "Yes, hello—I'm sorry, I meant to say hello."
He made the same sound again and nodded at the giant that was his brother. "Farkas, this is Deirdre. Deirdre, my brother Farkas."
Farkas stepped forward. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her hand. But he drew too close, leaning the entire, towering shape of himself down to peer into her face. She froze. If she didn't know any better, she'd have sworn she heard him inhaling. Like he was … smelling her?
She was speechless. Farkas paused and nodded, as if in confirmation, still too close. And she noticed something even odder than his behavior. She drew a breath in delighted surprise.
"Oh, pretty," she blurted. Farkas blinked. He drew back. Hearing herself, Deirdre felt her face warm anew. Everyone was staring at her.
"I mean—I didn't—" Aela and Vilkas exchanged glances and Farkas was looking at her blankly. She put a hand to her mouth as if to keep it in check. "I've never seen someone with two different colored eyes!"
Farkas cocked his head and blinked his strange eyes again, one of them brown and the other baby blue. He grinned broadly as if suddenly understanding.
"And that's pretty?" he asked. His voice was lower than his brother's, rumbly, but not harsh.
Deirdre sputtered. "Well—Ye—Why not?"
Farkas reached out and poked her cheek below one of her own eyes. "In that case, yours are pretty too. They almost match your ribbon."
Deirdre had no reply. Farkas may have looked like his brother (making matters worse, this did mean he was quite handsome)—but this could not have been less of a Vilkas response.
"It's like a really big dog made friends with a really small kitten," Aela said.
Vilkas, seated apart with Aela as he removed his greaves, said nothing. His brother was standing with Deirdre on the other end of Jorrvaskr's back porch, answering every question that came into her head regarding their array of weapons. She'd chirp a query and point and crane her neck to see him, and he'd nod, and lower his head to be heard, and answer as easily as if they were children discussing toys.
"We're gonna have to talk to him about sniffing people again," Aela added.
Vilkas snorted. "He was just trying to see if he could smell what I smelled."
"So it was your fault for getting him curious," she surmised. "He does have the best nose of us. And I've got the best eyes. What does that leave you with?"
"The best brain."
She extended a foot and shoved at the shin he'd just uncovered. He began untying the fastenings on his second greave.
"What, you want to take over the account books, Aela the Brain?"
"I could."
"You don't have the impulse control to be the best brain."
She kicked him again. He took off his greave and used it to whap the side of her foot. She snapped her foot out of range and stood.
"Well, hurry up with that, Vilkas the Brain, because you're coming with us to find her family and head over to the tournament grounds."
Without giving him a chance to decline, she went toward the duo. Vilkas gathered what pieces of armor he hadn't already stowed and set them neatly into the chest by his feet. He locked the chest and shoved it into place next to Farkas's. Meanwhile, Farkas and Deirdre were standing at earnest attention as Aela gestured and pontificated.
Vilkas joined them and interrupted. "Deirdre."
Aela stopped talking. Vilkas gave the girl a once-over. She seemed as bright and happy as she had been at her birthday party, as if news of the dragon attacks hadn't touched her.
"Did the Jarl send soldiers to Riverwood?"
She perked up in surprise. "Yes. How did you know?"
Because Aela and I asked him to.
He kept his tone neutral and chose his words carefully. "Riverwood is similar to a lot of places where dragons have appeared. No walls and no soldiers, let alone a standing army. Sending troops is the least the Jarl could do to protect one of his villages."
And there—that made her eyes dim; his words hadn't been quite careful enough. She focused on his feet rather than his face, fingers curling around the bow she'd hung on her shoulder.
"It won't make a difference."
He hesitated too long. Aela nudged him to say something.
"The biggest reason Helgen suffered so much was because the attack came out of nowhere. They were caught off guard. The soldiers know what they're preparing for this time."
Another silence. Aela nudged him again, but it wasn't his turn to say something, and Deirdre was still looking down. He tried to mentally signal his brother. Farkas just stood there with a disconcerted expression.
Finally, Deirdre's lips turned up at the corners, a bleak smile. "The dragons aren't mindless, you know? Everyone seems to think they're just beasts. But they're intelligent. Sentient."
Vilkas's attempts to come up with a mollifying statement ground to a halt.
Sentient? Since when did anyone find out the dragons were sentient? Monsters the size of mammoths, or bigger, with intelligence? How could anyone expect to fight that?
Deirdre lifted her head, solemn-faced, nodding as if she'd heard his thoughts. "They're not attacking villages out of hunger or fear. They want us to know they're here."
A chill ran down his spine. He felt the air prickle between him and the other Companions; their hackles were raised.
Unable to deny the certainty in Deirdre's eyes, Vilkas felt himself arriving in a reality where dragons had an agenda.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
Her gaze shifted away. "I could tell. From the dragon in Helgen."
Aela, serious, placed a hand on the girl's shoulder. "You should move to Whiterun. You'd be safer here."
Deirdre shook her head, the bleak smile returning. "Gerdur and Hod can't abandon the lumber mill. It's their entire livelihood. But—recently they bought a horse and a boat for the river. If a dragon attacks, we're just going to run, however we can."
Her matter-of-fact tone was so blatantly false, a bad attempt to appear as if she weren't phased. Perhaps it was because she was so short, and at the perfect height for him to easily place a hand on her ribboned head, that Vilkas felt a strong urge to do so. Farkas was apparently picking up on his thoughts now, because he dropped a clunky palm atop the crown of her hair.
"You're very brave," Farkas said.
Deirdre, sagging a bit under the weight of his hand, looked at him. Her demeanor grew obviously warmer, and the light came back to her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said, reaching up to pat Farkas's hand. "I didn't mean to be depressing."
She lifted both hands to take Farkas's wrist and draw his hand down before her, examining it. Her lips drew into a confused pout. "Farkas—how do you even do anything with hands this big?"
The change was too abrupt. Vilkas turned his head to hide a snort of laughter. Aela guffawed.
Farkas took Deirdre's wrist in turn and pointed almost accusingly at her hand. "No, how do you do anything with hands this small?"
Aela turned away with laughter, too surprised to control herself. Deirdre's grin was genuine, and the tension had dispelled as Aela leaned on her little shoulder for support.
"Oh gods, you two," Aela chortled. "That's perfect."
Happy again, Deirdre glanced up at Vilkas. He shook his head in mock exasperation, stamping down another urge to pet her head—as if she actually were a kitten Aela had brought home.
"I thought we had a tournament you were dragging us to," he declared. "We should grab Aela's bow if we're going over there now."
Author's Note:
I felt compelled to give Farkas heterochromia. It's more common in dogs than humans. And Farkas is a Good Boy.