After more than a month spent cooped up in the city, being out on the open road again was a joy despite the destination.
The air was brisk and the clouds low and grey with spring's last gasp before the summer heat set in. The weather had held through the first day and the feel of a stiff breeze on Ashildr's face had done wonders for her mood.
Behind her, the column of soldiers made slow progress towards Solitude. Rather than ride along sedately with Ulfric and Galmar at the footsoldiers' pace, Ashildr had volunteered to lead the fore-riders on the road ahead to ensure a clear passage for the army and to scout out space for the night's camping. With the countryside stretching away and open around her, the jingle and squeak of horse leathers creating a steady cadence, and the jocular conversation of the soldiers in her ears, the claustrophobia of Windhelm gradually dropped away like a fever and she could breathe relief again.
It was not all easy going, however. The narrow valleys that wound through the ridges between Eastmarch and Whiterun could hide any number of foes bent on ambush and Ulfric had grown suspicious and careful since his last few experiences traveling abroad. During the distraction of the war, more than a few bandits had exploited the army's preoccupation by setting up in old guard towers and caves near the main roads. More than once, the vanguard stumbled upon such camps and had to route them out. As Ashildr stood in her stirrups now, surveying the broad pastureland between foothills and forest, it seemed that the scouts had run into just such a covey of unfortunate raiders. A small contingent we're bringing the survivors back for inspection.
Trotting her dappled grey horse up to the approaching party, Ashildr noted that the soldiers bore two prisoners between them, half-dragging them forward to push the men groaning down into the dirt in front of her like cats proudly displaying their a catch of rats.
"Bastards were holed up in an old sentry tower up ahead," one of the Stormcloaks rapped out, pleased with himself, as he kicked at the nearest of the wretched prisoners. "Most of 'em went down fighting, save these two. Thought you should see this before we strung 'em up, though."
The soldier reached down and jerked one of the men up to his knees, twisted the prisoner's body to one side in order to display a bare upper arm on which a Legion tattoo was clearly visible. The other, it was revealed, bore the same mark. Ashildr shook her head, scowling. The winter had been hard - no doubt especially hard for the Legion as Ulfric cut off all of their supply lines one by one. It was hardly surprising that a few legionnaires, growing desperate and hungry on bottom of the barrel rations, might have quietly slipped away from their units and turned to banditry to get by.
The two men looked lean, dirty, and ragged. Their armor was a mix of neglected Legion lorica and other mismatched pieces. Banditry had not proved a lucrative career change, it seemed. The younger of the two was barely old enough to have a scratchy growth of dark beard on his chin and his aquiline features marked him as an Imperial. The elder was a Nord, weather-beaten, sandy-haired, and silent. Both had sustained injuries that bloodied their faces and clothes and both looked hang-dog as they glanced up at Ashildr to find out what fate awaited them. Only the Imperial looked afraid.
"Deserters?" she asked.
Not that it made a difference either way. Whether they were war deserters or just bandits who happened to have once been in the Legion, Ulfric had a point to make about the security of the country under Stormcloak rule. It would only make the killings seem that much more justified and proper if the poor sods were both bandits and Imperial supporters. So, they were bound to die regardless.
The Nord looked directly up into Ashildr's face then for the first time and she felt her heart leap into her throat with surprised. The features were slightly more haggard than she remembered and she couldn't immediately recall his name, but she recognized the face. Dark blue eyes and a certain set of heavy jaw turned the lock on memories that she had long tried to forget.
She saw at once that the man recognized her, as well. His expression became energized, if slightly bewildered.
"Wait, I know you," he stuttered.
One of the soldiers rapped him sternly on the back of the head with the butt of his axe.
"'Course you know her. She's the Dragonborn. Answer the question."
"No, no, from before," the man continued, eager now as he addressed her. "You were with Braden's Black Dogs down in Hammerfell for a year, escorting caravans, weren't you? You were there when those khajiit raiders chased us into the canyons. We nearly never got the damn horses out. I remember taking a silver bracelet off of one of those cats and you won it off of me in a game of bones that night after it was all over with. We . . . you remember me – Reinn – surely?"
The Stormcloak soldiers glanced between her and the bandit with suspicious expressions, as if waiting for her to confirm or deny the accusation.
I do remember you, Ashildr thought, her heart sinking as images of the desert and that awful campaign came back to her, but battles fought together half a dozen years ago aren't going to save you now.
Sighing, she dismounted. She glanced at the younger bandit, who was trying to make himself seem as small and inoffensive as possible, and then nodded to the soldiers.
"Take the Imperial. Make it clean. No sense in drawing it out."
"No!" the boy whimpered, but his captor seized him and held him fast.
"What about the other?" one of the Stormcloaks asked, eyeing Reinn, who was still gazing up at Ashildr with a steady and hopeful expression.
"I'll deal with him," she replied and waited till the soldiers had dragged the pleading younger bandit away before she turned her attention back to Reinn.
She did remember winning that silver cuff off of him. It had been etched with a design of gamboling tigers and she had enjoyed wearing it for a time until necessity had forced her to trade it off as part of a ransom barter. Reinn had been a good sport about it, too, as she remembered. He had made some cheeky comment about fairings for the fair that had made her sixteen-year old self scoff and then blush later in private. Later, on another night and after a bottle of ale too many, there had been more than that. Ashildr pushed those thoughts away. They wouldn't make her current task any easier.
"How in Oblivion did you wind up here?" she forced herself to ask, her mouth dry.
"Ran into some trouble down south," he admitted, buying time. "Came up here for a fresh start. Ended up joining the Legion during the War - for the employment not the sentiment. You know how it is."
"I do. And then?"
He grimaced, apologetically.
"Got into trouble there, too."
Ashildr sighed and shook her head at him. What a damnable waste.
"You stupid sod."
Fear jumped into his eyes at her tone and he reached out a hand at her, though she noted that he didn't dare actually touch her.
"Ashildr - I remember now. It hasn't been that long. Listen, I know how it seems, but it ain't as bad as it looks. All we did is take a bit of gold or food off a traveler now and then. No killing. Nothing like that. Times have been hard. We were just getting by, waiting out the war."
His eyes had a haunted look to them that Ashildr knew all too well, but she did not flinch. Reinn shook his head, grieved.
"I know I've made a mess of things. But you and me – we went through the desert together. We bled together. For a night, we did more than that. Remember? Cut me loose, for old time's sake, and I'll start walking and keep it up till I'm out of Skyrim completely. I swear it, by Talos' beard. I've learned my lesson."
"It's not that easy," Ashildr told him, feeling her heart sink and a crawling horror sweep up her spine. She nodded her head at the clutch of riders waiting not far away. "Those archers over there are Ulfric Stormcloak's. So am I, now, I guess. They don't take kindly to those who prey on the common folk and travelers. And you, unlucky bastard that you are, are a Legionnaire and a bandit with the misfortune to be caught right at the time they're looking to make examples. Even if I let you go, you'll end up with an arrow between your shoulder blades before you get a hundred paces away and I'll have to explain myself to Ulfric. Best I can do for you now is save you a slow death. I'm sorry."
"Fuck. Divines help me," Reinn whispered, his face paling. His body slumped, defeated. Ashildr felt her chest constrict in unwilling pity.
I won't feel sorry for you, she thought fiercely. This is your own fault. It has nothing to do with me.
But she could not escape the feeling that it could have easily been her. Under slightly different circumstances, she could have ended her life kneeling in the mud, too, there at Haven for similar reasons.
"It's not personal, Reinn. If this were just another contract, I'd let you go and hang what the client thought about it. Things are different now. Different rules. Different terms. You did this to yourself and I can't save you."
The man did not look up at her and, grimly, Ashildr drew her sword. It would be crueler to drag this out. She could see the riders watching her as she paced a few steps to stand behind the kneeling former mercenary, judging the blow. He didn't need to see it coming. She couldn't spare him, but she could give him a quick death – a soldier's death rather than a criminal's death – at least.
"Do you want me to get a message to anyone? Anything you want sent back to your family?" she asked him and his shoulders shook with a brief, humorless laugh as he wiped a filthy hand across his scalp and face.
"There's no one left now, is there?"
There was a weariness in his voice, a tremor of acceptance. He bowed his head briefly and, after a moment, blew out a deep breath and raised his head again, squaring his shoulders. Preparing himself.
"Just so we're square, I don't blame you for this," he told her without turning to look at her. His voice trembled, but already he sounded far away - man looking back on his life rather than forward to death. "You're right. I did this to myself. I've been on the downhill slide since those days we were with the Black Dogs. I could never seem to get my feet again after the desert. Just as well that it's you. For that night behind the inn, lift a bottle for me in the next town and don't think badly of me. Alright?"
Ashildr struck quickly to spare him the agony of waiting for the blow to fall. She stabbed the broad blade of her sword into the vulnerable spot between neck and shoulder and twisted, sending it cleanly down to the heart before Reinn could draw his next breath. He died quickly, with only a brief and nearly soundless final gasp. She pulled her blade free and then began to clean the hot gush of blood from it, stepping back as the Stormcloaks returned from dealing with the other bandit.
"String that up with the rest," she told them, nodding expressionlessly at the body despite the horrified numbness that swept across her skin to deaden the tiny voice screaming in the back of her brain.
Mechanically, Ashildr swung back up into the saddle and urged her horse quickly onward to see the place that the scouts had settled on for the night. It was not the first time that she had run a sword through a former comrade, but it was the first time that it had affected her so viscerally. The act seemed to scald something inside of her that was no longer protected by the chitinous shell of indifference that a decade of killing had built up. Ashildr tried to block it from her mind. The man was dead, it was his own stupid fault, and there was an end to it.
Nevermind the look on his face when the realization hit that he had run through all of his second chances at last. Nevermind the ghost of a younger man living there behind his eyes - one that she had liked well enough to count among her first drunken fumblings at the cusp of adulthood. Never mind the reflection of herself staring back at her, the burned out wretch that she might have become in time if she had not become the Dragonborn instead.
Nevermind that it was the person she had become who had so little choice in ending his life now.
~~0~~
After a long day of marching, the military camp settled quickly. Ashildr made her reports, ordered an extra ration of ale for the men who had engaged the bandits that afternoon, and sat quietly through a meal with Ulfric and the other officers. She excused herself back to her tent early and no one questioned it.
Rest was precious when soldiers were on the march. Everyone knew how a few minutes alone after an exhausting day of travel could make the task bearable.
Inside, she stripped down, washed the sweat and dirt from her skin as well as she could with just a bowl and rag, and then - just for a moment – Ashildr reclined back on the bedroll bare-breasted and sighed with relief. The cool evening air was like a balm on her damp skin, making her feel cleaner than she was. She watched as the dim illumination of sunset finished fading into dusk on the walls of the tent and she closed her eyes.
She should get up and finish dressing, as Galmar would come tramping in soon enough, but it could wait another moment or two. After the events of the day, she needed this.
She had long ago perfected the skill of dodging inconvenient lines of thinking that made the work harder, but the coincidences of the day had gotten to her. They rubbed and ground at her like stones in her boots.
How was it that she happened to run into Reinn under those circumstances now, just when she was contemplating whether or not to leave Ulfric's service to return to mercenary work? Ashildr had just been starting to remember what it was about the life that had appealed to her when he had turned up out of one of the worst chapters of her past to remind her of how badly things could go as well.
There had always been a thin and easily crossed line between mercenary and brigand. Killing Reinn had been the right thing to do, as it was just as likely that he'd rob the next person he saw on the road. Someone else would have done it even if she had not and she'd made it clean at least. Ashildr could not help feeling like a damnable hypocrite anyway.
It could easily have been her. Divines knew she'd done some questionable work to get by herself since breaking with her last company and heading north, the latest of which had gotten her nabbed by Tullius on the road and nearly beheaded. At least she was respectable now as the Dragonborn and Ulfric's sworn sword, even if she'd lost her cat's brazen liberty to do as she pleased in the process. Maybe that was the trade-off she had to live with: a life lived on her own terms, free of attachments, and an unmourned, unmarked grave at the end or a life of obligations that both yoked her down and gave her a place to belong at the same time.
Was it worth it in the end? That was a harder question. As claustrophobic as the arrangement felt, she had a place of her own to hang up her sword at night and people to come back to. Reinn, like her father, had died with nothing and no one but her to remember so much as his name.
A soft, distant growl of thunder rumbled in the distance and Ashildr listened, her eyelids heavy, as the rain began to patter onto the roof of the tent above. Better to let it go for the night. She would relax just another moment longer and listen to the rain, and then she would finish dressing, put her gear in order, and -
A strangled cry erupted from Ashildr's throat as she awoke with a full-body jerk, prepared instantly to defend herself. One moment there had been hot sand, glaring sun, the roar of battle in her ears, and the enemy bearing down on her. Now it was all gone, replaced by pitch black darkness as her eyes opened and her heart pounded like a trapped animal inside her chest. The rush of blood rang like the crash of steel and bodies in her ears and terror seized as her hand grasped in the dark for the hilt of a sword that had vanished from her grip.
There was movement and the feel of a body threateningly close to hers. Instinctively, Ashildr lashed out, trying to scramble away, but strong arms closed around her, holding her fast. She twisted and fought, but the grip was firm and her limbs felt leaden in her disorientation. It was only when a familiar voice reached her, low and insistent in the dark, that she paused, heaving.
"Wake up, Ashildr."
Galmar's voice filled her ears, murmuring comfort. He was behind her, she could feel the scratchy hair of his chest and beard against her shoulders and neck. His thick arms were wrapped tightly around her to contain than to hurt her. Panting, with cold sweat dripping down her face, Ashildr stopped fighting. She was in her tent, laying on a bedroll. She was not about to be cut down on a desert battlefield. The smell and taste of blood, grit, and sweat were only fading specters, however real they seemed.
The housecarl shifted a little behind her, relaxing his grip as she went still, but he did not let go of her immediately. She felt his hands rubbing along her arms - something solid and physical and reassuring to anchor her in the now.
"You're safe," he told her, too gently for a gruff old soldier. "It was a dream. Nothing's going to hurt you."
The fear bled from her and Ashildr let her body go slack at last, exhaling a long ragged breath into the humid darkness.
It had been a long while now since she had had one of the screaming night-terrors that had plagued her off and on ever since that desert campaign in her youth. She had almost forgotten how unquestionably real they always seemed, how vivid the colors and smells and sounds were and how desperate the sense of mortal danger and berserk rage. She could still taste the sand and the metallic tang of blood in her mouth. The nauseating stench of death was in her nose as if it had all happened yesterday. That, at least, had happened yesterday. The image of Reinn's face before he died burned inside of her super-imposed upon the memory of his living face in the light of a campfire years ago and it made her cringe and shiver with grief and horror.
Galmar's arms around her squeezed tighter just for a second, his beard and breath pressed against the back her neck reassuringly. She wasn't alone. At any other time, Ashildr would have shrugged Galmar off with a curse, but the housecarl's broad chest felt like a shield at her back and she did not want to give up that protection. She lay in his arms, quaking with unused adrenaline as her breathing gradually returned to normal.
"You alright?" he asked at last.
She had never heard Galmar speak to anyone like this before. In the face of his concern, she could not find the energy or the desire to snarl at him as she would have done before now.
"Yes," Ashildr lied, unconvincingly. Her voice sounded thin even to her, barely more than a hoarse whisper.
"Back in the war?"
"No, another fight from years ago." She drew in and exhaled another deep breath, closing her eyes again. "I'm sorry I woke you."
He grunted, dismissing her apology. After a moment, he added more hesitantly, as if confessing an awkward truth:
"I still have dreams of the Great War myself. Happens to all of us, I think. Nothing to be ashamed of."
The heavy rain, audible now that Ashildr could hear something other than her own heartneat and the battle-screams from her dream, thrummed a regular cadence on the roof of the tent. She shifted slightly, her fingers searching for the rumpled wool blanket as if to assure herself that everything was indeed fine and she was safe in bed. It was then that she realized, noticing the soft friction of her bare skin moving under Galmar's calloused hand, that she had fallen dead asleep before she had managed to finish dressing.
She was bare from the waist up.
A hot, furious blush suffused her face and, cursing mentally, Ashildr snatched the edge of the blanket up to cover herself and tried to remember where, in the dark tent, she had draped her tunic.
"I didn't look too closely. Tossed a blanket over you when I came in," Galmar confirmed, a slight chuckle in his voice as he guessed her concern.
He drew away, assured now that she was really alright.
Her skin was suddenly cold without him there. The feeling of empty space seemed to press dangerously now at her back and it unnerved her. Ashildr considered getting up to find the tunic, but it could be anywhere in the tent and she felt that she had already caused enough of a disturbance for one night. And, irrationally, she did not want to leave the relative safety of the bedroll and Galmar.
Being used to little or no bodily privacy for most of her life, she weighed the options and decided that modesty could wait till morning now. It wasn't as if there was anything to be seen that Galmar would not have seen already.
As Ashildr settled back down, though, she remembered Galmar's arms around her like armor, his voice assuring her that she was safe, and found that she ached to have it back. Just for now. Just for tonight. The feeling made her anxious, but the thought would not leave her. She turned a little in the darkness, forcing her voice to cooperate despite her misgivings.
"It's cold tonight from the rain," she proposed hesitantly. Galmar shifted, listening. "Do you want to huddle up a little more for the warmth?"
It seemed to take him a moment to understand what she was asking, but then Ashildr heard him turn over and felt the warmth of his skin return. His large hand moved onto her side as she scooted back against him, pulling the blanket over them both. His arm slipped down around her waist to a more comfortable position beneath the wool.
There was a difference in the touch this time as his hand brushed across her naked belly, though she could not have defined it with words. It made some tiny, primitive place in the back of her brain spark and tingle. It was a confusing. She wanted to simultaneously escape the half-embrace and turn to press her face against his solid chest at the same time. Both danger and safety at once.
But it was warmer. It made her feel a little less vulnerable to the horrors that still stalked the edges of her mind. Within a few moments, Galmar's breathing slowed and became steady and deep. Listening, Ashildr felt herself relax. Lulled by the rhythm, she gradually settled again and slipped into the antechamber of sleep. This time no dreams disturbed her.
~~0~~
The next few days were busy ones and there was little time between work and sleep for Ashildr to bring up what had happened between her and Galmar, nor was she entirely sure that she wanted to.
The column of soldiers stopped in Whiterun briefly to collect the retinue of the hold's new Jarl and allow Ulfric to survey with satisfaction the city that he had captured from his old rival Balgruuf. What would happen to the former Jarl now remained to be seen, but Ashildr had bargained her marriage in part for his and his family's continued safety and so it seemed likely that they would be left in peace. For all of his faults in judgement, Balgruuf hadn't struck her as deserving the chopping block. She hoped he would be allowed to live out the rest of his life with minimal grief.
The weather remained damp and rainy and Ashildr found herself continuing to curl close to Galmar in the night, sharing his warmth and reciprocating with hers. She told herself that it was simply to ward against the chill and the tent was smaller than their usual accommodations anyway, but she knew that it was more than that. The appearance of Reinn and the subsequent nightmare had rattled her more than she could admit and Galmar was a solid and comforting presence in the night, reminding her that she was not alone.
For his part, Galmar said nothing about it either. He simply accommodated her. He did not push for more when she was in his arms than the nightly embrace and the single kiss on the forehead that she had promised him. The way his body reacted to her was unconcealable, though - and, embarrassingly, she could feel the way that hers had begun to react to him as well. If he noticed it, he was good enough to pretend otherwise.
The changes did not stop there. Galmar was no less brusque during the day, but Ashildr observed that he smiled more, especially when she happened to catch his eye. He moved around her with greater ease, as if he had dropped a heavy weight from his shoulders, and she heard him joke with Ulfric as they must have done when they were younger men with less to worry about. Ulfric, too, seemed more energized the closer they drew to Solitude and the Moot, as if affected by his old friend's mood. Whether the change in Galmar had anything to do with her or whether it was simply a factor of the fresh air and the end of a long campaign in sight, Ashildr could not be certain. She found herself increasingly infected by it, too, despite her misgivings.
Whether it was the memory of his voice in the darkness, comforting her in a moment of terror, or if it was simply that they had fallen back into the more comfortable routine of soldiers on the move, she and Galmar had reached a détente in the marital tension. His presence in her life no longer felt like an imposition. The old patterns that they had developed back in the war camps reasserted themselves again, and she felt herself begin to enjoy the old bear's company once more.
Everything was not the same as it had been, though. For as much as Ashildr had begun to remember what she had liked about the housecarl, she felt shy around him in other ways now. Six months before, she would not have been bothered by the accident of someone seeing her half naked, but the marriage and its implications had changed that. Galmar had seen more of her now than she had wanted him to see and not simply her body. He had done nothing to use that against her, but she could not help but feel that he had achieved some sort of advantage over her.
And in Ashildr's experience, it was only a matter of time before that advantaged was pressed.
To complicate matters, she wasn't even certain that she would refuse if he did try to press his gains. In the night, as she lay next to him, sometimes even twined up in his arms as they slept, she felt a heat rise into her belly and an arousal that became almost unbearable at times. She found herself wondering what it would be like to kiss him, to roll over in the night to press her lips and her hands to his face and flesh and feel the same in return. It was mortifying, but also deeply exciting, and the thoughts would not confine themselves to their shared bedroll.
Galmar was not good-looking in the conventional sense like Ulfric, nor did he have the advantage of youth. He was battered from years of hard fighting, his body hardened and weathered, but Ashildr had grown up around men like that. She was like that. She knew what it meant to carry scars and she admired that Galmar wore his as marks of pride instead of shame. She appreciated the strength and the prowess that had allowed him to survive all of these years. The surly set of his features spoke of a man that could face down a Legion by himself without blinking. He was a warrior grown into his prime, as dangerous for the knowledge between his ears as for the strength of his body, and now that she had noticed him in this light she found it impossible to unsee it.
So it happened that, as they reached the crumpled land between the karst spires of the Reach and the spinal ridge of the northern headland that sloped uphill towards Solitude and made camp after a full day of marching in the rain, Ashildr found herself uncomfortably alone with Galmar in their tent for the evening with little to do but wait.
"It's still pissing down out there," she grumbled as she entered the tent and shucked off her cloak, folding it inside-out to keep the wet wool contained.
Galmar was crouched to one side of the small space, taking the opportunity to oil his weapons and the steel bands of his armor against the damp.
"Does this for a few days in the spring up here every year," he shrugged. "We're only a day or two from Solitude, so with our luck it should stop raining just about the time we get there."
Ashildr glanced up at him, acknowledging the joke with a brief smirk as she rooted in the sack for the rations that she had retrieved from the camp stewards. It was too wet for the stewards to get a decent fire started, so it would be cold rations for the column, from Ulfric himself down to the lowest ranking footsoldier. She laid out pieces of hard bread, two lumps of yellow cheese, two curls of salted beef, and a pair of apples. There was a large clay bottle of ale to share between them.
Outside the still open flap of the tent, the drizzle continued, turning the field they had camped in and the road beyond to mud. The damp air chilled her and Ashildr went to fasten the flap, nodding sympathetically outside at the soldiers who had the bad luck to draw guard duty on Ulfric's tent as she did so.
"At least it's not snow," she remarked conversationally as she settled back down to hack the bread and cheese into pieces with her belt dagger. "I'd rather be in the field than at court, but I hope Ulfric will decide to schedule his next war when it's warm."
"You don't miss jostling around a brazier with a dozen other brutes for enough warmth to thaw the frost out of your eyebrows? The long marches through knee-deep snow? Bolting your ale and bread every night before it freezes solid? That's what makes a real Nord feel alive," Galmar teased, grinning at her.
"Well, I bred true to Nord stubbornness, anyway, if not the cold tolerance. My ancestors were sensible enough to move down to the warm south and here I am, ruining their efforts by settling down in the frozen north again."
"If stubbornness goes along with Nord blood, then I'd wager you have a pedigree finer than the Emperor's own stallions, Dragonborn."
Ashildr chucked an apple at Him with pretend pique and Galmar caught it easily, grinning at her before crunching into the firm fruit. This was how things had been during the war, she thought. It was harder to be standoffish with someone when your lives depended on each other. She missed that. As he munched on the apple, Galmar set his work aside and studied her, raising an eyebrow at her meaningfully.
"So, you're thinking of staying on after all then?"
It was a dangerous question and Ashildr felt her inclination to loosen up a little slam shut again. She tore a large bite out of her salted meat and chewed it to give herself time to think.
She had not really made a conscious decision to stay, but then she realized then that she had not given any further thought as to where she would go either. Whenever she had left a contract in the past, she had always known what the next step would be. There had always been another stepping stone to jump to before, but she could not settle her mind enough to make a plan this time. It was just complacency, Ashildr had told herself, a reluctance to pull up stakes to leave what was turning out to be a lucrative job. That was a lie, though, and she knew it. The real reasons were more complicated, but she didn't want to admit them even to herself. Not yet.
"A weeks to go still," she replied, shrugging to make the reply seem more casual and offhand than she felt, and then tried to turn it towards humor with a wry smirk of her own. "Unless you've finally realized that I'm more trouble than I'm worth. Want to call it quits?"
Galmar chuckled at that.
"You'll not get out of our bargain that easily, Dragonborn." He set the core of the apple aside and reached for the bottle of ale, taking a pull of it before passing it to her. "I like a little trouble in my life. Keeps a man on his toes."
He reclined sideways onto one elbow, stretching out along the back wall of the tent as he picked at the bread and cheese, regarding her with a frankly appraising look. Whatever it was that he saw in her seemed to interest him. In the lantern light, his grey eyes gleamed like silver or brightly polished steel. Ashildr felt a warmth suffuse the skin of her neck and cheeks, though whether it was from his gaze or from the ale she could not be sure. He continued.
"That's what makes the world worth living in. Mead is never sweeter than when it's drunk after a battle. Venison never tastes as good as after a long hunt. And there's no woman so worth the trouble of winning over as the one willing to fight you tooth and nail to get her own way."
For a moment, the only sound was the constant drumming of rain drops on canvas and the slurry of camp noises outside. Ashildr stared, surprised at the audacity of the statement, but Galmar just smiled at her, entirely unrepentant. Aside from the night after he had given her the cloak, when they were still feeling each other out, he had never taken such a nakedly suggestive tack with her before. She should growl at him a little for that, push him back into place, but she could not summon the words or the will to do so.
On the one hand, she desperately did not want to have this discussion in a tent in the middle of nowhere with the rain pouring down around them. There was no room to fight and nowhere else to go if things took a bad turn, as was their wont. On the other hand - and, oh, how she hated to admit it even as she felt the thrill of it in her spine - Ashildr found herself responding to the flirtation.
In the end, she was the one who looked away, tearing another piece off of the stale bread as she tried to retain her cool demeanor.
"And you think you're the man to win me, then, do you?"
"You and I were forged on the same anvil," he retorted confidently. "Steel sharpens steel. I think you need what I can give you as much as I want what you can give me."
And there it was. Ashildr narrowed her eyes at him across the tent, feeling a little of her interest deflate. This would have been the moment when any suitor, looking to get a leg over on her, would have made his suit and Galmar had just overplayed his hand.
Let him try it, she thought, a little disappointed, as she responded.
"And what's that?"
"A home," Galmar answered unexpectedly. "Somewhere to go when the fighting's over. Something worth getting up and fighting for again. Someone to be there at the end of the day and in the dark at night."
The words struck Ashildr like a slap to the face and she felt herself flinch physically. Her back straightened like a spear shaft. Her skin prickled.
He couldn't have known what those words would mean to her. She had confessed her secret fear – that she would end her life a burned out husk alone on some battlefield – only to Erandur. No one but her knew about the tangible reminder of that fear that she had received in the form of Reinn only days before. Galmar could not know that a home was something that she had never had - that the very word could pierce her like an armor-shattering arrow straight through to the heart.
The general watched her unperturbed, his eyes searching as if they really could poke and prod into those deep and hidden places inside of her. Ashildr turned her face away out of a protective reflex. There were so many parts of her that she kept locked away, reserved only for her own introspection - and even then only sparingly - that the idea that Galmar might be able to read her so easily was frightening. No one needed to see beneath the carapace of the Dragonborn, the mercenary, the hired killer that she was. Even Erandur had only been allowed a glimpse after earning her trust. The last thing she wanted was the man in front of her beginning to tease out those knots.
Thunder growled overhead and the tent rocked slightly in a gust of wind as a fresh wave of the storm rolled in. The splatter of rain around them became a constant battering drone. Ashildr tried to concentrate on the sound and not on the housecarl as she forced herself to settle, taking a few deep and slow breaths.
"You may be right," she replied, trying – and failing, she knew – to sound dispassionate. "Ulfric wants me on hand in case this goes badly with Elisif. There are worse places that I could settle, and Divines know the Empire would have my head on a pike if I ever set foot within their borders again at this rate. If I stay, then you and I will have to work this out, but I know what you want and I know that you won't get it from me. I'm a wanderer and a rake. I always have been, always will be. I don't think you'd care for that in a wife once the charm wears off."
"You don't know what I care for in a wife," Galmar challenged calmly, his eyes glittering from under his heavy blond brow with both humor and unconcealed desire. "But you could easily find out."
She could. All it would take to make those nocturnal imaginings that had been running through her head the last few days a reality was her agreement right now. Ashildr felt her grip loosening on the soft animal inside of her - hungry for warmth, human contact, lust, and love. It stirred, scrabbling for release, and flinging itself against the inside of her skin with increasing force. Galmar, looking at her now as if he had a beast of his own, was the quarry that it wanted.
But this hanging on a razor's edge between seduction and soul-piercing observation felt dangerous, too. As if by acquiescing, by staying still a moment longer, something might happen that they could neither afford nor take back afterward.
"It's been a long day," she deflected finally, wrapping up the remains of her bread and cheese for later and rising to her feet with a stiff grunt. "I'm going to turn in and catch an extra hour's sleep."
Galmar hefted himself to his feet as well. The tent was really just big enough for two soldiers and their gear, though it was larger than what most of the men were sleeping in tonight. A tall man could stand in the center by the ridge pole and extend his arms most of the way upward before touching canvas, but the slope of the roof was steep and that meant that Ashildr found herself standing far closer to the housecarl than she had intended - alarmingly close. The smell of him - horses and leather and the undefinable tang of maleness that rose from his skin - ignited an electric heat through her nerves, spreading out across her neck, shoulders, and down into her belly. She stared into his eyes, paralyzed as if by a mage's spell and unable to pull away.
He stepped in towards her, his hands slipping first onto her shoulders, warm and heavy on her skin through her under tunic. She did nothing to stop it, even when he leaned towards her to kiss her brow, one hand sliding affectionately up her neck to her cheek as he did so. A wave of cold chills shivered down her spine.
Of course. Their bargain, but different tonight. Galmar lingered. His hands caressed her skin and the kiss burned on her forehead. His lips were inches from her own and Ashildr felt her own part with the intensity of it all. She didn't know if she wanted to push him away or press forward into his arms, but the limbo between those opposites was both unbearable and painfully pleasant at the same time.
"You know, you were asleep the other night when I came in," he ventured, his voice a different kind of growl now, low and warm. "I think you might owe me another kiss if we're being fair to our deal."
There was no subtlety in what he was asking, no misunderstanding. This would not be the chaste kiss on the cheek or forehead that he had asked of her nightly until now. This was uncharted territory - the leap from the ledge into yawning space.
No, no, no, a chorus of warning voices were shouting in her head.
Above them all, though, the quieter, primal, insistent urge whispered yes.
"I always keep my word," she replied, the phrase leaving her lips like a spell.
Standing this close to him, she could not see his eyes unless she looked up, but she saw the curve of his mouth turn up at the corner. His fingers laced into her hair as he drew her closer. She smelled the hint of the ale they had drunk on their breaths and became acutely aware of the firm pressure of his chest against her breasts, separated only by two thin layers of cloth. He paused there, as if gauging her response.
To hell with it, she thought and kissed him.
Her arms twined around his neck as he responded hungrily, pulling her more firmly against him. All sound around her seemed to cease. If the rain was still falling outside, no one in the tent was aware of it. Before she could even think to demure, the gravity of the night and the past week carried them beyond a mere kiss. Galmar's lips broke gasping from her own only long enough to press to her neck, their hands a fury of need as they clasped at each other and dug into clothing to find the bare flesh beneath. It was all happening so fast, but Ashildr was beyond caring as she abandoned restraint. The hunger with in her, kept clamped down for too long, would not be denied this time. She devoured him just as he was doing to her. She pulled at his tunic and her own as they stumbled backwards together towards the bedrolls.
Galmar halted suddenly, steadying her to prevent her from tripping over the forgotten remains of dinner, and pulled away enough to look at her. His breath was quick and ardorous, his body almost tremored with the raw, crackling need surging through them both, but he hesitated.
"Is this what you want?" he panted huskily.
His hands moved back to her cheeks, weaving into her mussed locks again, and he tilted her chin up enough to look into her eyes. He needed to be certain, Ashildr realized. With their history, with the deal they had struck, he needed to know that she was with him in this, not out of duty but of free choice, before letting go.
She kissed him again deeply in response and leaned her forehead against his as her fingers found the rough crosshatch of chest hair through the neck of his tunic.
"I want you."
That was all that he needed to hear.
He helped her from her tunic and breaches, covering every inch of her flesh that he could reach with kisses. He tossed his own clothes away before drawing her down with him onto the bedrolls. Ashildr let the thoughts and concerns that had plagued her for days dissolve along with the soft glow of the lantern as she snuffed it out and then twined herself eagerly up into Galmar's arms in the darkness.
Nothing mattered any longer. Not the war. Not Ulfric. Not the marriage or the moot or anything before or after that moment. The only thing that remained was his lips and his hands and the wordless, writhing ecstasy of bodies kept too long apart.
For a time, everything but the universe inside of the tent winked out of existence and was gone.
~~0~~
I am the stupidest woman that has ever lived.
The anxious tirade that had been playing through Ashildr's mind all day finally hit its peak as she trudged down the muddy main road of Dragonbridge towards the inn.
As the weather looked to be clearing, Ulfric had decided to hold the column at Dragonbridge for the night to give the men time to prepare themselves after the slow, slogging march so that they could arrive in Solitude in finest form the next day. There were too many horses for the small stables in the town to hold and so some of them had to be picketed outdoors. Ashildr's dappled grey was one of the unlucky ones and she had just finished seeing to its feed for the night. It was the last of her tasks for the day, but there would be no rest for her this evening. Not with what awaited her back at the inn.
The garrison town was bustling with activity as the townsfolk prepared to billet the soldiers and provide what food and services were required of them. Ashildr noticed more than one look of resentment directed ahead of her where Ulfric stood on the front porch of the tavern inn with Galmar. This had been a Legion outpost until just a few months ago. The people were entitled to their grievances as long as they cooperated. And they did, at least minimally. Ulfric was going to have his work cut out for him here in Haafinger hold, though, that was certain. Ashildr was going to have her work cut out for her, too, helping him convince the skeptical and angry Imperial loyalists to keep the peace. As tall an order as that was, however, it was the least of her problems right now.
Galmar stood with his shoulder turned towards her, discussing with Ulfric as they surveyed the road. She could see him smiling even from this distance and she watched with a sinking heart as his expression creased into one of the most open bearish grins that she had ever seen on the Stormcloak general to date.
He's happy, she thought guiltily. Everything is just fine from where he's sitting at the moment.
He had not noticed her just yet and Ashildr felt a strong urge to bolt in the opposite direction before he did. Galmar would come looking for her eventually, though. Especially after last night.
Last night.
Mara help me, she groaned in prayer, feeling her mouth go dry.
If it had been just one more spur of the moment knee-trembler in an army camp, it would have been nothing to raise a fuss about. It would have hardly been her first. All morning, from the moment that she had woken up in Galmar's arms, she had tried to tell herself that that was all it was - just scratching an itch that had gone untended for too long. That was a lie, though, and one that she could not make even herself believe.
One unguarded moment. In one moment, she had let her shield down enough for Galmar to break through her guard and now nothing could be the same again. The memory of his hands and his lips and his murmurring voice, unknotting her in the darkness until she unraveled completely, made her heat inside again even as it also made her want to run - to hide herself somewhere where no one would ever see her again. It was more than just the act of lust that she had given herself up to last night. Galmar had brought something else out in her, something hidden and secret, unseen and unhoped for, exciting and terrifying at the same time and, she knew, there was no way that it would not come crashing down around them both in the end.
Laid bare in more ways than one, he would see her for what she truly was. Or he would try to make her into what he wanted her to be. She did not know which of those things would be worse.
I can't do this, Ashildr thought as she approached the inn, trying to keep her eyes on the imposing carved dragon-headed bridge further along that gave the village its name rather than let them wander to Galmar.
All day long, as they rode through the rocky highland scrub of the Reach borderlands, she had grappled with the question of what would happen next. Galmar would certainly take last night as a reciprocation of whatever feelings he had for her, at last. And wasn't it? Just as she couldn't ignore him anymore, she couldn't ignore the feelings that he had pulled from her last night, but she couldn't bring herself to answer that question either. Despite what Erandur had told her, this attachment that was welling up inside her felt like weakness. A chain about the neck, a whip to beat her with. Eventually, it could drive her down to her knees harder than any blow from a mace and she had given up her only armor against it already. After hearing her father's drunken, bitter curses about her mother, she had resolved never to wander down that path herself. She had let her resolve soften a little for Ulfric, but even Ulfric had used that small hold over her to manipulate her to his own purposes in the end. Galmar could do the same if she ever let him possess even an inch of her.
The alternative felt like a knife in the gut, though. Last night had given her a taste, finally, of what she had been missing all this time. She had tried filling the emptiness at the core of her being with sex, with drink, with work and fighting, but nothing had fit until she had lain, spent and warm, in Galmar's arms and woken up to his kisses that morning. Something had clicked into place then, but it had thrown her fears into sharp relief, too. She knew herself too well to believe it would work. She couldn't sustain something like that. She could never be good enough to deserve what she had felt with Galmar there in the darkness of the tent. Not on her best day.
If she left, though, she would never see Galmar again. Thinking of it hurt, but knowing that it would also hurt him made it worse. Still, the longer this grew, the harder it would be to break later. A clean break now instead of months down the line when she inevitably failed him might be the kindest option. Galmar was one of the toughest men that she had ever known. He would be angry, but maybe hating her would help him move on.
From the porch, Galmar glanced in her direction then and noticed her approach. Ashildr saw the lift in his expression as he smiled at her, happy to see her, and it broke her heart. If she could have sunk into the muck beneath her feet, never to be seen again, she would have done so right at that moment.
You have to finish it for his own good, Ashildr told herself, gritting her teeth. The sooner you get it over with, finally, once and for all, the better. Tonight.
At the very last moment before she reached the inn, though, her nerve deserted her and she banked sharply off of the road to cut through the inn's kitchen yard to the other fork of Dragonbridge's high street beyond.
Not yet, she thought to herself, though she lambasted herself up and down for her cowardice under her breath as she stomped down the path, scattering chickens in her wake. I can't face him yet. I need time. Time to think.
A voice called her name as she reached the back of the inn and Ashildr turned, feeling the blood draining from her face as she saw Galmar rounding the corner of the building and striding after her. Her heartbeat begin to quicken as he approached, as if she were about the face down an enemy unarmed.
He's not my enemy, she told herself guitily, noting the puzzled expression on the housecarl's scruffy face as he searched her own for clues. I'm the villain of this story.
Galmar slowed as he neared her, his guard up as he noted her expression. Ashildr turned half away, waiting because she could do nothing else, but unwilling to look at him. One careless glance into his eyes and she might lose herself again. It would only prolong the misery. Finally, it was Galmar who spoke.
"You're avoiding me again. Why?"
His tone was cautious, but there was an undercurrent of concern there, too.
"I'm not," she began, but too defensively and his brow lowered immediately in disbelief of the obvious lie. She sighed, putting on the calmest tone she could muster under the circumstances. "We both have things to do, Galmar. We'll talk later. Alright?"
"No, it's not alright," he grunted, but he softened his tone as he took another step towards her. "You're upset. Let's talk now. Whatever it is can wait a few more minutes."
"No. It can't," she snapped back at him, getting angry now that he could not just let it go.
Instantly, she regretted it. None of this was his fault, really. She shouldn't be taking it out on him.
Everything I say and do comes out wrong.
She shook her head, drawing backwards away from him.
"I don't want to fight right now. Just leave me be for awhile. Please."
His expression, which had hardened slightly at the bite in her voice, changed once again into greater concern at the uncharacteristically civil "please".
"If there's something for us to fight about," he observed, closing the distance she had put between them, "then I should know it. Let me help."
He reached out a hand as he neared her to brush along her cheek, offering the familiar comfort of a lover, but the intimacy of that gesture was too much for Ashildr. She jerked away, closing her eyes and bowing her head so that she would not have to see his face. Or so that he would not have to see hers. Her lungs were burning. Her eyes were beginning to sting.
Get a grip, she snarled at herself mentally, but she knew that the only thing that could stop the impending sordid scene was to get away from him as quickly as possible.
Galmar was staring at her now with a steadily growing frown, she saw when she dared to glance up at him. He was rough by nature, but it was a controlled roughness for all of that. He could bring out his temper when necessary, though even his rages were carefully measured most of the time. She had seen it often enough in the war camps, when he was dressing down another officer or soldier. But she could see something else happening now in his face and she didn't want to be there when it broke.
"Is this about last night?" he asked cannily after the uncomfortable pause. "I can't think of anything else that you'd be this worked up over."
When she didn't reply, because her throat refused to shape the words she knew she would have to say to finish all of this, his expression turned stony.
"You gave me your word that if you had something to say to me, you'd say it. Spit it out, Dragonborn."
Not now, not yet, Ashildr plead with herself, trying to find anything else she could say that would sound convincing and allow her to escape. But would it be any easier later? At last, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment to try and still the vertiginous, gut-wrenching sensation of teetering on the brink of disaster, and then let it go.
"I think that I gave you the wrong impression about some things last night."
There was a thunderous silence. Even the birds and squirrels in the trees seemed to hold their breaths as the world grew eerily quiet. The only sound Ashildr could hear was the war-drum thump of her pulse in her ears and she was oblivious of everything else but Galmar, his expression turning cold and angry in front of her eyes.
"That so?" he ejected tersely.
If she had thought there was a chance in Oblivion that he wouldn't have followed her, Ashildr would have turned and pelted off down the road right then and there. But it was past time to have done with this. She sucked up her courage as best she could, and forced a casual shrug.
"Men and women in close quarters, Galmar. We've both seen it happen before. Ale, a rainstorm, some talk, and the next thing you know." She had to work hard not to grit her teeth against the bald-faced lie. "It was a good time, I'm not sorry for it. But I don't want you to read too much into it."
For just a moment, as his eyes flashed and she saw the flush of rage creep up his face, Ashildr thought that he might actually slap her. She didn't step back. If he did, she would deserve it. One more pain was nothing to her now, and it might make it easier for him in the end.
He sucked in a deep breath and looked away for a moment, seeming to try to collect himself, and then grated out between clenched teeth at last:
"That's the best you can come up with, is it?"
"I'm-" she started, but he cut her off. She stumbled back half a step in surprise as he took a step towards her, stabbing a finger at her face.
"No," he barked.
His voice came low and angry and fast, the words clearly enunciated so that there could be no confusion in meaning. Each one might as well have been a kick in the gut.
"I can tolerate a lot from the people that matter to me, but I will be damned, Ashildr, if I stand here and listen to you lie to my face about this."
She had expected this, had wanted to give him the opportunity to roar at her if he needed to, but the bitterness and anger in his voice and the enraged hurt in his face hit her deep and worse than she could have imagined. It was too much. She had suffered wounds from every kind of weapon imaginable and she had taken those in stride. But this - his pain, what she was doing to him right now – was a wound that no healer or potion could ever fix.
"I should go," she told him, pulling away, but Galmar caught her arm in a grip like an iron band and jerked her back. She was too surprised and aggrieved to resist.
"No, you damned well won't. You're always shutting me out or running away right when we're about to get to the meat of things. This time you're going to stand and face it," he snapped at her.
When she did not move to extricate herself, he leaned close to her until his face was mere inches from her own.
"I know the difference between a quick rutt in camp to take the edge off and what happened with us last night. I know that you do, too. I saw it in your face then. I can see it in your face now. Tell me that you don't want me or that you don't think you can be happy with me. Tell me to go hang, if you feel like it. That'd be like you. But don't try to pretend that it was nothing. I deserve better than that from you."
His gaze was scorching. His grip was tight on her arm. Ashildr did nothing to resist it. There was no defense for this, because he was right. He was right, but she could not find the words to tell him why.
"You don't understand," she whispered, hoarsely.
She was on the verge of tears now, but she no longer cared. She had bollocksed it all up already. Why not complete the humiliation? Galmar released her arm, standing back a little. Ashildr crossed them quickly to hide the fact that her shoulders were beginning to tremble. He shook his head at her
"I understand more than you want me to. If you really wanted to leave, you'd be gone already. You'd have told me to take a short walk through Oblivion's Gates long ago. I know you better than you think, and I'm still here. You're still here. And that means something, but you're too bull-headed and determined not to see it."
A paroxysm of frustration overcame him then, the sum of all his exasperation and anger across the last month coming to a head, and he uttered a strangled growl as he stamped his thick boot in the dirt with a furious curse.
"Damn it, woman. Would it kill you just to give over this once and let me love you?"
The instant after the words left his mouth, Ashildr saw Galmar's expression freeze. He turned sharply away from her, pacing a couple of steps like an agitated bear before turning back to glare at her uncertainly. He hadn't meant to say it, she realized, and now it was clear that he thought he had revealed too much at the wrong moment.
He loves me, she thought, the words sounding strange to her ears.
The hints had been there, but it was different to actually hear him say the words. When had anyone ever told her that they loved her? Her mother had run off too early for that. After her mother, her father was too hardened by bitterness and constant fighting to ever let that word pass his lips. She hadn't heard it from any of her comrades in arms, either, even the ones she had bled with and fought next to and held while they were dying. Not from any of the one night bedfellows that she had picked up here and there, certainly. And yet here was Galmar, without guile or subterfuge, admitting it and then recoiling as if she might throw it back in his face. The recognition of the voice that must be jeering at him in his head silenced her own momentarily.
What could it possibly hurt now? Ashildr thought, defeated. She nodded, sighing.
"You're right," she admitted.
Galmar did not move, but she could sense his surprise.
"It wasn't nothing. You're not nothing to me. I shouldn't have said otherwise, but it doesn't change anything, Galmar, even so."
"Why?" he fumbled, blind-sided.
"How many reasons do you need?" she asked, snorting a derisive laugh. She gestured weakly at herself. "Look at me. Imagine me playing house with you for the rest of our lives. Imagine me as the mother of your children. I can't do it. I'm ornery and coarse and I get nervous if I stay in one place for too long. I can't go a fortnight without wanting to be back out there, fighting. The only thing I know how to do well is fight. I'm good at it. It's all I'm good for."
"That's not true," he began to counter and she interrupted him with a hollow laugh.
"Alright, I'm good for a few things, then. I can fight. I can kill a man at sixty paces with my Voice alone. I swear like bards recite poetry. I can drink most people under the table on a bad day. I'm quite the catch," she told him and shook her head at him, willing him to understand. "I'd end up hurting you, whether I wanted to or not. And you'd end up hurting me, too. It's the way of things. I have enough on my conscience to live with, don't make me add ruining your life to the list. I like you well enough, Galmar. Too much. I can feel myself starting to fall for you, if that's what you need to hear, and it scares me. Let's just call it a day before we spoil it."
For a moment, he said nothing. She expected Galmar shout at her, to turn and stalk away cursing that he'd ever met her. She was prepared for that. Instead, he crossed the space that she had put between them and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into a tight embrace that endured until she felt a few long-denied tears begin to spill down her face at last. Ashildr let her cheek fall against the rough bear-fur mantle on his shoulder, breathing out a ragged breath as he hugged her tighter, moving so that his lips were pressed against her temple.
"All I want - all I've wanted this whole time - is you," he murmured. "I'm not a man for a soft woman to handle. I've had thirty years to find someone that I thought could put up with me and I chose you. Because I know who you are. Talos strike me if I ever try to change you into anything else. I would never hurt you. I would kill anyone who tried with my bare hands."
"Even Ulfric?" she asked, pulling back slightly though not out of his arms, as she brushed the tears from her face. "I know why this whole thing was set up. He didn't say it, but I know what would have happened if I hadn't agreed in the end."
"You let me deal with Ulfric, if it ever comes to that," Galmar asserted gruffly and she saw his expression twist as if remembering something troublesome. "And it won't. I settled that with him when the arrangement was struck. It was his council that was pushing the issue, not Ulfric himself. They'll regret it if they ever try to pull a stunt like that again."
His fingers curled around the back of her neck as he slid his hand up into her hair. His thumb brushed away a damp tear trail on her cheek. Galmar's face took on the earnest expression of a man unused to asking anyone for anything, and who nevertheless found himself entreating.
"If you think you can love me, stay with me. That's all I ask. You trusted me enough to fight at my back in the war. I never let you down then. Trust me now."
For a few moments, the only thing Ashildr could do was stand there, eyes closing tight as she felt the warmth of his palms on her cheeks and the closeness of his body. The feel of him, as it had been last night, was comforting despite the fact that they had been arguing bitterly not moments before.
It will never work, a part of her said.
But another part replied: If it could ever work with any man, this is that man.
"Alright," she relented, finally, and felt Galmar lean his forehead against hers briefly in relief.
"Come on," he said, taking her hand as he turned back to walk towards the front of the inn. Ashildr allowed him to lead her, numbly. "Right now, there's a warm dinner to be had and a real bed to be slept in later. That's enough for tonight. We can pick up where we left off once we're settled in Solitude."
Where we left off, Ashildr thought, as they turned back out onto the road and closed the twenty feet to the inn porch. The soft evening light was falling around them, casting shadows through the dark pine trees that dotted the hills around the village. She could hear a bard playing inside the inn and knew that there would be food and fire and expectant merriment about tomorrow's procession. Later, she would sleep next to the man who, now, was her husband in truth rather than merely the man she was bound to for political convenience.
Please, don't let this be a mistake, she prayed, not caring which Divine or Daedra might hear it, and she followed Galmar into the inn to see what might come of it.
~~0~~
The walls of Solitude felt packed to the brim with people. In addition to the citizenry, there were the Imperial prisoners, the enormous garrison of Stormcloaks that had been left to protect and keep the peace in the city, travelers who had come to see the spectacle, and the retinues of every Jarl in Skyrim. Finding a table in the Winking Skeever was impossible. Not that Ashildr had much time for drinking or relaxation. She followed Ulfric like a ghost through his various meetings and ordeals, lending the Dragonborn's tacit approval to his suit for the throne. The Jarls, mostly Ulfric's old time supporters now, were jubilant and no one doubted that the Moot would take an extraordinarily short time to complete. Everyone knew already who was in charge of Skyrim.
Elisif herself was as beautiful as ever, but paler, more distant, and somber. She welcomed Ulfric to the Blue Palace with courtesy befitting a woman welcoming her bridegroom, but Ashildr could see, in moments where the girl thought no one was looking, the crawling distaste that the former and future Queen had for her soon-to-be husband. Her expression, when turned to Ashildr, was especially cold.
I don't blame you, Ashildr thought, and kept her peace. There was nothing to be gained by kicking a woman who already had more than enough personal tragedy to face.
Her own situation, too, was steadily improving. Once she stopped pushing him away, it was humbling how differently her time with Galmar felt. A side of him began to emerge when they were alone in their room together that she had never observed in him before. He was not like Ulfric. He couldn't put his feelings easily into words to inspire or seduce, but he talked to her of other things. Tactics. The days when he and Ulfric had been boys in Windhelm. The battles that he had fought in the Great War. He shared his life with her and she, her trust in him bolstered by his reciprocal trust in her, began to share her life with him. And at last a day came when Ashildr knew that she would not leave Ulfric's court after all. Not for Ulfric's sake, but for Galmar's. And because, for perhaps the first time in her life, she was truly happy where she was.
The Moot, as expected, took less than a day to complete and Ulfric was proclaimed High King of Skyrim. A week of celebration ensued, though what the city populace lacked in enthusiasm was more than made up for by the Stormcloak troops. Ulfric's first act was to restore the shrine of Talos to its proper place in the Great Temple, which mollified some of the more traditional Nords who had been on the fence. In the time between the siege of Solitude and the Moot, the Thalmor embassy had been razed to the ground, the ambassador and her entire entourage disappeared or killed, and so there was no one to raise a public outcry. The only thing left before the long journey back to Windhelm for the official coronation was the wedding ceremony.
The Great Temple was packed to bursting for the royal wedding and Ashildr felt sweat trickling down her skin and soaking her gambeson underneath her armor. Ulfric awaited his bride with a stoic expression, and Ashildr couldn't help exchanging a knowing glance with Galmar as Elisif began her procession up the aisle. It was an ironically familiar sight for both of them, and Ashildr would have found the parallel amusing if it wasn't for the bloodless and defeated look on the the younger woman's face.
The ceremony dragged on joylessly for far too long as the priestess droned the traditional words. It couldn't have been more clear that the two people standing before the crowd of witnesses despised each other, though both conducted themselves with all of the civility and courtliness of their respective ranks. The wedding feast was little better. Ulfric and Elisif sat next to each other during the feasting and the songs and dancing, both resplendent in their wedding attire, both looking as regal as it was possible to be, without a glance or a word passing between them the entire time.
"Well, that was depressing," Ashildr muttered to Galmar later, once they had seen the newlyweds off to the bridal chamber and were returning to their own room.
"I wouldn't be in Ulfric's shoes tonight for my weight in gold," Galmar grunted, and shook his head. "I told him it was a foolish idea."
"Makes you feel fortunate, doesn't it?" she replied and saw him glance at her, an eyebrow raised. Ashildr smiled and nudged him gently. "Well, maybe not you. You're married to a Dragonborn with a pedigree for stubbornness. But me – I think I got the best out of this arrangement."
The housecarl grinned at her and Ashildr felt his hand find hers, twining their fingers together as they walked the last few paces to their room.
"There's just the one thing," she continued, with a mock sigh as he opened the door, holding it for her.
"What's that?"
Ashildr stopped in the doorway, trying to keep the smile off of her face as she looked up at him with an exaggerated fake scowl.
"I'm related to your clod-brained brother now. I can't believe it."
He laughed at that and they entered the room together, where Galmar spent some time vigorously making it up to her while Ashildr reflected that, as gifts went, he really was the best she had ever received.