Chapter 20: My first aurora

[25th – 26thof Last Seed4E 201]

On my second day with the Companions of Whiterun, Farkas had requested my company for a quest after I had had an extensive and strenuous morning training with Vilkas, and after breakfast we had started to search for a bandit who had somehow managed to escape from the Dragonsreach prison. There had been no trail I could have identified, but Farkas had claimed that he could sense one, and I had just followed him; after all, he was a Companion Circle member and likely knew what he was doing. Farkas had lead us to a place called Redoran՚s Retreat, west of the city of Whiterun, and we neither knew if the escaped prisoner was actually there nor if he was alone; it was entirely possible that some fellow bandits were in there as well.

The wooden door creaked a little when I opened it, and we just made it inside in time to avoid the rain which now started to pour down on the tundra. So far, as it appeared, we had yet been undetected by anybody who might be inside, I thought, but this turned out to be a wrong assumption. Alerted either by noise or by our smell, a dog was coming for us while we were still in the entry passage. The animal barked and snapped at me, and I killed it quickly with my battle axe. Well, with Farkas' steel armor – no, that was probably the special wolf armor the senior Companions had – and his metal boots, sneaking was not an option anyway. However, the dog's barking must have been heard; right when we had turned around another corner of the passage and had a glimpse into a larger room, an arrow hit my right arm. Ouch! I sat down and yelped, but Farkas passed me, ran ahead and swiftly killed the bandit archer. Once he had checked for other bandits and considered the area clear, for the moment at least, he asked:

"Are you all right, my friend?"

"No, not really, Farkas, but I will be soon again. I guess that I can consider myself lucky that the arrow went into the muscle in my upper arm rather than in the knee."

I used my small magicka supply and healed the wound as much as I could, once I had the arrow pulled out; that task was made easier by the fact that the arrow had only partially penetrated the leather, and the barbed hook had not fully penetrated my skin. An additional potion completed the healing process, so that I was soon ready for action again. Being able to heal wounds quickly was a real good thing, thanks to spells and potions, but getting an injury still hurt a lot. I really needed to improve my magicka so that I could do the healing better and more quickly, and I hoped that regular exercise might do the job.

The cave had an assortment of various mushrooms growing in corners and a few shelves and barrels, but not much of value. A passage was visible leading further down, and if Farkas' suspicion was right, we might find the escaped bandit down there, possibly with some friends of his.

I looked at Farkas for directions, when he told me:

"Now, whelp, how do we proceed from here? Would you just walk in or wait here or what?"

He asked my opinion? Okay, he probably wanted to find out how my way of thinking worked. Being a Companion was more than just fighting skills, which made sense, and I was a new whelp, so that the senior Companions needed to learn about my attitude and thinking. I pondered the question for a moment and said:

"We do not know how many bandits are in there. I'd like to learn that first; I could sneak ahead and see about it, and then we can plan further."

"Hm, how good are you in sneaking?"

"Thanks to my leather armor and being a Khajiit, probably better than you are!"

"You got a point, whelp – go ahead!"

The tall Companion chuckled, and it did not look like he was offended by my remark at all. However, he probably knew well enough that sneaking was not his specialty, and with his fighting experience and sturdy armor, he would have been able to rush ahead and kill anyone opposing him without too much trouble. The ground was hard and solid in here, no twigs or so to make noise, and I had already noticed before multiple times that my large paws enabled to me to walk very quietly. I nodded and slowly walked into the passage.

What and whom was I going to find? Was I going to be able to stay undetected? I needed to pause for a few seconds to calm down my nerves, but then I proceeded slowly and cautiously; due to my sneaking abilities I hope that I might be able to stay undetected, but of course I did not really exactly know how the sneaking and detection mechanism worked, or rather how good the bandits' hearing might be and how well I could actually walk quietly. What if they had a Khajiit with them or an elf with fine hearing and they could hear me coming?

Some torches sent light from behind, but the passage itself was very dark. Nonetheless I could still see more or less properly, and I recalled that Khajiit had some special sight benefits. Okay, that was quite useful now, as I did not have to take a lighted torch with me.

The passage wound around a few corners, and I listened carefully to make sure that there was nobody coming in the other direction. Eventually I could see light ahead of me, and when I cautiously looked around the next corner, I saw the beginning of another cave and heard voices talking, and although I did not have a line of sight to any of the people in there, I could also understand what was said:

"Boss, don't you think that they will search for me here?"

"No, I do not think so. The city guard is too lazy, and they won't spend time to try to find an escaped prisoner."

"But what if they do?"

"Later I will send Mad Eye out to stand watch, just in case. For now, the one guard in the first room is good enough, as he's got his dog with him. Come sit down with me, and let's have a drink. We have a nice collection of wares now, and soon we will have to think about transporting that to another hold and to a fence, so that we can cash in on it."

"All right, let's drink now."

So, there were at least three of them – the boss, the escaped prisoner, and the one who had been called Mad Eye. How could I find out if there were more? Slowly I moved back and reported to Farkas:

"There are at least three people in there, potentially more; I could not look into the entire cave within being detected."

"So, what can we do to lure them out?"

"I guess that we could just make some noise, but that might make all of them come out at once. I could take a few bones and throw them in, so that hopefully only a single one will be sent out to investigate. That should make it easier to capture them rather than having to kill."

"Okay, go ahead."

I nodded and sneaked back. I had taken a few bones with me, and when I had reached my previous position, I threw one of them into the cave. The bandits listened up, I threw the next piece and imitated a noise like a barking dog. The bandit chief shouted:

"Mad Eye, go out and kill that stray dog!"

I retreated and warned Farkas, and when an Orc with evil looking eyes approached, he was hit by my fire blast and Farkas flat blade at the same time. He collapsed and was bound and gagged. After some time another bandit came looking and encountered the same fate, and eventually we heard somebody mumbling: "Why don't they come back? Finding that stray dog can't be that challenging!"

Normally they should have not have assumed a stray dog to be here, as the single guard we had killed would have prevented such an animal from coming in, but apparently they were not smart enough to consider that. Now, overwhelming the bandit boss was a little more difficult, but we managed, and now we had three bound bandits on the ground. One of them turned out to be the escaped prisoner, as Farkas claimed judged by the description he had received from the city guards. I was very happy to see that the task did not necessarily imply to kill all of our targets, and I mentioned that to Farkas.

He snorted: "Sure, we try, but sometimes killing cannot be avoided. But anyway, good work, whelp! Now we leave them here for a few minutes and check inside; we need to make sure that we haven't missed anybody, too."

That we did, and nobody else was hiding anywhere. We grabbed some loot and also found a few special items, including a sword with a characteristic handle. The big Companion looked at it and said:

"Hm, we should show this around; maybe somebody in Whiterun knows where it was stolen from."

The bandits had stashed a lot of probably stolen goods in a few chests in one of the rooms, much more than we could easily carry with us; for now we only took some special items and the coins, and we were going to tell the hold guards about the place so that they could get the rest of the stuff. We made sure that our prisoners were properly tied up and made ourselves comfortable in the medium sized cavern where most of the bandits had been hiding before. The area had a fire with a cooking pot above it, plenty of food supplies and even a table with three chairs. Something like a stew was already bubbling in the pot, and judged by the smell, it seemed to be ready to eat. While Farkas seemed to be eager to head out again, I talked him into staying for some more time to eat, and grudgingly he admitted that he was hungry, too. Thus, the two us sat down, and I served two large potions of stews into bowls which I took from a shelve, adding bread. For about ten minutes we ate in silence, took a second serving, and once we were done, we extinguished the fire and left.

In the main room, we removed the gags and the feet bindings from the bandits and made them march out of the cave. Outside, darkness was all around us, and when I suggested that we might rest here for some time to catch some sleep, Farkas replied with a smirk:

"I don't think so. Look, with our prisoners, one of us would have to stand watch all of the time. We are going back to the city now. You better learn to sleep less when needed and get along without it for some time, whelp!"

That was that. I did not like it, but he had a point. Well, at least once we were back a bed was going to wait for me in Jorrvaskr. We made sure that the bandits hands were properly bound, and as additional precaution Farkas looped a thin rope around each captive's waist, while he took the end.

"In the darkness around us, one of them might try to run, even with bound hands; I prefer to be safe and spare us a round of chasing. You go at the end; with your eyes you should be able to see if any of them gets any bad ideas."

When we had walked for some time, with Farkas leading, the bandits trailing him as forced by the rope, and me being the last, I noticed that the sky was getting a little bit brighter. It was way too early for dawn, I was quite sure about it, but the explanation was visible soon; a colorful cloud like band started to spread on the night sky, and I realized that I was watching an aurora, a.k.a. polar light. Back in my old life I had never seen one, as Germany was too far south, but I had seen images from Earth and of course I had enjoyed auroras when playing the game. Here, in my new reality, this was impressive nonetheless, and I had to be careful to properly divide my attention between the road, the captives, and the spectacle in the sky. Without the bandits I might have asked Farkas to stop for a few minutes, but I did not think that he'd consider giving in to such as weakness with others around; besides, he had probably seen such a view multiple times before. For a few minutes my scientifically trained engineering mind got busy thinking about the latitude we might be on and how Nirn՚s magnetic field might differ from the one on Earth; for now, I could only guess. However, when comparing the show I got to the images I had seen in my previous life, I thought that Nirn՚s auroras surpassed the one on Earth and were more impressive and beautiful. It was entirely possible, though, that just seeing them in reality made the difference. Anyway, although I was not a night person, it was quite likely that I'd be able to watch the show again at some time in the future.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to our captives rather than admiring the aurora; when I looked forward, there were only two of them instead of three; one of them had apparently managed to loosen the rope and was gone. After a couple of seconds of near panic I quickly alerted Farkas and jumped on a rock to look around. Aided by my Khajiit eyes and the polar light which illuminated part of the sky, I was able to see a person running away from us, at a distance of maybe two hundred meters or so, and I ran in the same direction. It did not take me long to catch up, and a few minutes later the unlucky bandit was tied to the rope again. I almost thought that I saw Farkas smirking, and I was not sure if that escape attempt had been an accident or a test; maybe the Companion had deliberately not tied that person properly to check if I did my job properly? If so, did that imply that I had failed?

Just before we got to the Western Watchtower, a small pack of wolves came from the right side and slightly from the front, so that Farkas was on point. He dropped the rope, got his greatsword out, and managed to swiftly kill or at least maim the three ones attacking him, so that the others turned around and fled. Our three captured bandits considered that to be a good opportunity and tried to run, this time all together, but they had forgotten that I was holding the back end of the rope, and when I stood and held tight, they were thrown on the ground when the rope tightened. Normally it should have been me on the ground instead, but fortunately they failed to manage to synchronize their efforts, and I had no big trouble holding my ground, using my greater body mass to my advantage.

We passed the Western Watchtower still before dawn; one of the guards posted there came with us, and soon we delivered the three people to the dungeons, collecting a nice reward from the dungeon master. I exchanged a few words with the man, and from some hints he provided I deducted that the prisoner had been able to escape not because the prison was not safe, but because some kind of bribery had been involved. It was probably something like a bandit telling about riches hidden somewhere and promising a guard to share with them if they'd just let them go. Normally one would expect a guard not falling for such a trick, but apparently it worked from time to time. Of course we also mentioned that a lot of goods were still stored in chests in the cave, and the hold guards would retrieve them.

Once we finally arrived in Jorrvaskr again, the new day had started and the sun was up. However, as I was very tired – there had not been any time to sleep last night, I went straight to my bed and fell asleep within a few minutes.

I was allowed to sleep until almost noon time, and then Vilkas decided to educate me on the financial aspect:

"Now, every reward we get plus the loot we find when doing a task is divided evenly between the Jorrvaskr community chest and ourselves. So, we have 500 septims reward from the dungeon master plus, let's see, 700 from the cave; this is 1200, so 600 go into the common chest in Kodlak՚s room. The other 600 are split between the two of you; you get 300 and Farkas gets 300. Got it?"

"What about the items we found?"

"We have another chest for items. We keep them for some time, and people can have a look to check if something which they are missing or was stolen from them might be there. If nobody claims them, we sell the unclaimed items off."

"What is the money in the community chest for?"

"Kodlak takes some money for his personal needs, Tilma and Hranura get money for shopping and their allowance, and we take money out for repairs and such if needed. We use money to buy potions, too. Sometimes Kodlak even donates money for a good cause."

I nodded, but I noticed that I had apparently missed something:

"Who is Hranura?"

"Oh, right, you probably haven't seen her yet. She is a young woman who help Tilma with her chores around here; Tilma is getting older, and although she'd never admit that, she finds it hard to cope with all of us."

All right, so I'd see her sooner or later. The concept of sharing the money seemed to be quite fair. While looking at the coins in more detail, I also realized now that there were different types of coins. The predominant ones were the standard single septims, but there were also slightly larger ones, showing a value of ten septims; I could see even a few special ones imprinted with 'one hundred septims'. That made sense; otherwise, paying larger amounts might require the use of a wheelbarrow or so.

I could probably consider myself fortunate that they had not developed a system using a different base number. For instance, they could have used coins for 1/9/81 septims, based on the Nine Divines and/or the nine holds in the province, or something even more complicated. However, septims were, as the name indicated, of Cyrodilic origin, and probably in use all over the Empire, or at least what was left of it. I could only assume that the fact that people had ten fingers here as well as on Earth had lead to the numbering system based on that number, and I was quite happy to see the similarity. In the game there had only been single coins and coin purses, and I had sometimes wondered how larger payments were made and how one could deliver the proper amount of septims for a house, for instance, properly. Naturally, with the simplified mechanics of a game, this was good enough, but this was my reality now, and I was glad to see how tings worked out with payments in Tamriel.

As Vilkas was done with explanations, I grabbed something to eat from the supplies in Jorrvaskr – Tilma kept a table close to the kitchen with some fruits, cold meat, drinks and such – and went out to the backyard to get some fresh air.

Missing an entire night's sleep made me a little bit cranky, and I did not feel up to doing anything important. After lingering around for some time I decided to walk down to the market area to see what was offered there. Same as a few days earlier, the smell from the bakery was enticing, I bought some bread there, ate it outside, walked around some more and finally found one of my favorite spots on a bench around the Gildergreen tree, where I almost nodded off a couple of times; at least for today, my sleep cycle was clearly out of sync. I was woken up, though, but some children's voices, and I could hear a girl saying something like that:

"Battle-Born! Give me your money!"

A boy's voice replied:

"I... I don't have any money."

The conversation, if it could be called that, continued:

"You'd better give me five septims, right now, or I'm going to bloody your nose…"

"No! Please! I really don't have any money, Braith! I'll give you ten septims tomorrow. Just don't hit me."

"Ten septims tomorrow, baby Battle-Born. Or I'm gonna bloody your nose and your lip!"

When I finally opened my eyes, I saw a Redguard girl with a threatening look opposing a Nord boy, and the boy was clearly intimidated by her. He quickly ran off, and I decided to call the girl over:

"Hey, Braith, can we talk for a moment?"

The young Redguard turned around, and when she saw me, she hesitated, so that I added:

"I don't bite, I just want to talk to you. I am B'lushona, by the way."

Slowly she approached and asked:

"You are that Khajiit who helped kill the dragon, right?"

"Yes, I guess that's me. You have heard about that?"

"Mister, everybody in the city has heard about that fight! So, what do you want to talk about?"

"Why do you bully the boy like that? This is not nice. Has he been bad to you?"

"Why is that your problem?"

"Because I make it mine; do you have an issue with that?"

"Ah, no. Can I go?"

"You have not answered my question yet."

All of a sudden she almost started to sob, and then she explained:

"See, I wanted to talk about Lars to my parents, and my papa told me 'Why don't you talk to your mother about this, okay?'. Mama told me 'Not now, Braith; go ask your father.' Who can I talk to? Get my point?"

"So, what is it you need to talk about? Would talking to a stranger like me help?"

The Redguard girl looked at me with big eyes, and all of a sudden she asked:

"Can I touch your fur?"

I chuckled and nodded, and she slowly moved her hand over the fur on top of my left upper arm; once she had done that for a minute or two she sighed and said:

"This is nice; I like your fur. So, the thing with Lars is, if he'd only kiss me, I wouldn't have to beat him up all the time…"

Once again I chuckled, and I replied:

"Do you really think that he might feel inclined to kiss you when you treat him like this?"

"I don't know. I have no idea how to make a boy kiss me."

"Same here, honestly; my success rate for making girls kiss me is also very low. Nonetheless, you might want to try being nice to him for a change, and you will have to allow him a lot of time."

"You really think so?"

"Considering my own success rate, or rather lack of it, you'd better not listen to me, true."

We both chuckled now, and Braith spent a few more minutes touching my fur, before she added:

"See, since my father lost his sword, he hasn't been the same. I used to be able to talk to him a lot, but lately he only worries about that sword. He and I used to talk a lot, and I liked it, but nowadays he rarely listens any longer."

"Which sword is that?"

"He says that it used to be his own father's old sword and claims that my grandfather could feed his entire family with the gold he made using that weapon. Papa doesn't want to 'let it gather dust in some thief's trophy room', as he says, and he believes that the group of bandits who stole it might still be in the hold."

"Do you know how this sword looks like?"

"No, not really, but Papa claims that it has our crafted family insignia on it."

"I recently found a sword with some special crafting in a bandits' lair, and it is now stored in a chest at Jorrvaskr. Maybe your father could look there and see if it is the right one?"

Braith quickly stood up and replied:

"I will sure tell my Papa to look there; thank you, mister! And I don't know yet what I will do about Lars, but I will at least think about what you said. Bye!"

Had I just gained another friend?

Afterwards, in late afternoon, I walked around some more, and I found another store I had missed earlier. There was an entire shop dedicated to clothes, as it appeared, and while it looked much less noble than 'Radiant Raiment' in Solitude, where the ladies seemed to be specialized on fine clothes suitable for court, an Imperial lady and her Dunmer husband who ran the store had all kind of common clothes, mostly robust pants and shirts for everyday work. We did have a small selection of normal clothes at Jorrvaskr, too, but as most Companions wore their armor almost all of the time, some of them even when sleeping, this selection was very limited, and they did not have much in my size. I used the opportunity to purchase a set of robust pants and belted tunic in my size, although quick modifications for my tail had to be made.

In the evening I joined the Companions for dinner in the big hall, and this time I noticed a young lady helping Tilma with distributing food and drinks and cleaning up. She was clearly a Nord and seemed to be quite cheerful. I greeted her and learned that was indeed Hranura; she had grown up in the city, and as Tilma was a friend of her parents, she had been offered the position here in Jorrvaskr; she had been working her for a couple of years and liked it so far.

Before I went to bed, I stepped outside for some fresh air and decided to train my magic a little. For now, I only could do healing and flames, and I practiced the latter a few times, always giving my magicka time to refill. During one of the next days I would go up to visit Farengar and hope that he might have a few more novice spells for me. After all, I would want to also practice with the other magic schools, not only restoration and destruction.

[Author's Notes: Now, the bandits in Redoran՚s Retreat are apparently not the smartest ones, but later in the story there will also be smarter bad people.

I could not find any references to different coins in the game or in Wiki pages, so that I just assume that only having single Septims would not be realistic.

Please review - I'd really appreciate it!]