Chapter 93: Home again

[22nd – 23rd of Morning Star 4E 202]

Antonius, Jordis and I had made a detour to Stony Creek Cave following our eventful time in Windhelm, and after we had managed to make the soldiers from a nearby Imperial camp attack the bandits, we had found the lute we had been looking for, the one which had been stolen from a bard. On our way back to Whiterun we had stopped at Darkwater Crossing for the night. We had joined the local miners and farmers around the campfire for an hour before retiring to a barn where we were allowed to rest; there was no inn in that small settlement. At least, even in winter, the close-by hot springs made the temperatures here more moderate than further away, specifically further north.

On the next day we happily marched on, and right when we were about pass Fort Amol, my eyes noticed a Thalmor patrol coming in the other direction. I quickly warned my companions, and we rushed into the bushes on the left side of the road and hid behind large rocks there. At this time, I preferred not to have another open fight with them, and I briefly covered my saber cats' snouts to indicate that they were supposed to be quiet. Nevertheless, the mage in the Thalmor group seemed to somehow sense us, turned in our direction and opened his mouth for a warning or so, but exactly at this time a frost spike penetrated his body and his call turned into a loud shout of pain. The attack had originated from the fort, and I noticed a couple of people in dark robes on the southern parapet. The other Thalmor turned around to face the danger, and within seconds frost spikes and flame balls were thrown in both directions. Naturally, the people in the fort had the advantage of cover, but the Thalmor spells were more powerful. The people in the fort called for more support, and soon there were at least five of them attacking the Altmer. The first two Thalmor were already dead, and the two prisoners the group had with them looked around uneasily, but did not dare to run yet. Apparently, the concept of tactical retreat was unknown to the Thalmor, and they fought to the last man or woman. They did manage to kill or at least severely injure two or three of the robed people in the fort, but a few minutes later there were no living Thalmor left. The mages in the fort now directed their attacks towards the two prisoners, obviously without any further discrimination, and I quickly called out:

"Come here, to us behind the rocks!"

The two prisoners, both male Nords, looked at each other very briefly, and when the next spike flew in their direction, they jumped and were soon next to us.

"Let me guess, they accused you of Talos worship?"

"Sure they did."

"And you probably are Talos worshipers, too. Welcome, we worship Talos as well, and Thalmor have attacked us before. Let us cut your binds."

My two housecarls used their knives, and I asked the two men:

"Do you need any further assistance?"

"We are without any weapons now!"

"Well, feel free to help yourself to anything the Thalmor had on them."

"Won't the mages in the fort attack us again?"

"We will give you cover – Antonius, watch out with me!"

I got my crossbow ready and Antoninus raised his bow, and we covered the two Nords for a couple of minutes to give them a chance to grab a few weapons from the Thalmor corpses. Once they were armed, they nodded in our direction, and one of them said:

"Many thanks to you all, and have a safe trip! We will head to Windhelm and join the Stormcloaks."

"Sure, do that, and have a good trip, too!"

The two male Nords who had been Thalmor prisoners managed to leave the area without further attacks and walked northeast, towards Mixwater Mill and Windhelm, and my two housecarls, Jordis and Antonius and I turned into the direction of Whiterun, eager to get home again. As we had just rested for the night in Darkwater Crossing, we should be able to make it today.

Valtheim Towers was still a place bandits called home from time to time, and today was no different. While we had hoped to get to Whiterun before the end of the day, the prospect of gaining additional loot was promising, too, and one day more or less did not really matter. Most of what we had collected in the cave had been given to the Stormcloaks we had met, and we had also been able to sell some of the remaining loot in Darkwater Crossing, so that we had plenty of spare carry capacity now; thus we decided to raid the bandit lair in the towers. I had been here before, with the Companions, and thus I knew the internal layout well. First order of business was the lone guard outside on the road, and a crossbow bolt from me did the job before she even noticed that somebody was approaching. The crossbow range was amazing, and due to diligent practice I was quite good in hitting a target from some distance by now, and it also helped that the heavy and fast bolt was not impacted as much by winds as an arrow was. Antoninus and Jordis proceeded inside, while I stood guard and observed the long stone walkway across the river. A single person might have noticed that something was going on and started to walk on there slowly, but another bolt stopped him and made the corpse drop into the river.

As soon as my housecarls reported the southern tower to be clear, I stepped up to the highest platform, and sure enough, somebody was leaning against a post on the highest level on the other side. Maybe from a distance they had not noticed that the ownership of the southern tower had changed, and I took aim very carefully. Surprised by my success, I somehow managed to kill that person with my first bolt, but others got alarmed. A minute or two later three bandits started to run across the walkway, and it was not easy to hit them. I got one of them, but missed the others. Antonius got the second one, and Jordis defeated the last one in close combat on our side.

I stretched my arms and started to relax, while still standing on the top platform of the southern tower, when suddenly something hit my right shoulder with great force, so that I almost fell down. When I looked down, I saw an arrow sticking out from there, and it had been able to penetrate my armor at least partially. Now as I saw that, the pain also started, and I quickly jumped down one level and sat down on one of the chairs there. My housecarls had seen the one who had shooting at me, and while Jordis pursued that person, Antoninus managed to hit them with one of his arrows, so that they were at least injured. The Imperial now came over to me and saw my injury; he helped me to remove my armor, prepared a healing potion and then quickly ripped the arrow out backwards, without any warning. I yelped, but realized that this had been the best way. Fortunately my armor had slowed down the arrow at least, so that it had not fully got in, but only like five centimeters or so. It hurt, but I could expect that nothing was severely damaged. I swallowed the potion and followed up with a healing spell of my own, and I was fine again a few minutes later.

When I looked out again, I saw Jordis approaching the one remaining bandit, and it appears that, despite the injury, it was a tough one. The angle was not not good for arrows or bolts, and I quickly sent Hanni and Nanni over to help my Nord housecarl, aided by Spirit who I also summoned. That was apparently a wise decision, as Jordis had apparent trouble in fighting the bandit. Antonius' arrow stuck in their upper arm, but probably not deep at all, as the bandit also wore a study looking armor. Jordis had to retreat step by step when the bandit swung their huge greatsword, but the situation changed when my three saber cats arrived. They forced the bandit to focus on them, too, and they were nimble enough to not get hit. Spirit took a leap at the bandit's throat, although it was also protected by armor. A saber cat hanging from the neck, though, was too much, and the bad guy stumbled and got down to their knees. Quickly Jordis took advantage of the situation, and cutting right through the ghostly Spirit, she managed to sever the bandit's neck from their body. Seeing my saber cat familiar cut in two by Jordis' sword made me shiver for a moment, but of course this had been the proper way to handle the situation; a familiar was a spirit being rather than a real living one, and Spirit was going to be fully 'alive' again the next time I conjured her.

As we were all exhausted from the fight, we decided to spend the night here. Hanni and Nanni were going to guard our sleep, and to make sure, we also locked ourselves in a room, likely the same one where the kidnapped people had been held months ago when I had been here with the Companions. Before getting to sleep, we searched the towers for loot, and there was some, but not a huge amount.

Once we were all well rested on the next day, we enjoyed breakfast together, grabbed our backpacks and headed out again. Jordis suggested to take the northern route and pass the Shrine of Talos again, and I agreed. We were in a good mood, as we were soon going to be home again. Well, my home and my Imperial housecarl՚s home, but I hoped that Jordis would soon consider it her home, too. From the northern tower, we followed the narrow trail upwards. For some time we headed west, until some structures were visible ahead and to the right. I knew that this was 'Fellglow Keep', and I hoped that we might be able to circumvent the place without being seen. However, we had no such luck, and a mage or so on a partially damaged tower there must have spotted us, as a fireball suddenly blasted towards us. Antonius had seen it on time, and due to the distance, we were nicely able to evade the attack, but how to counter it? Wait, my crossbow should be able to cover the distance, so that I stopped, got the weapon out and aimed carefully. My first bolt missed, but the second one was a hit. While I stayed here for the moment, my two housecarls raced ahead to potentially find more enemies, and they were soon able to flush out another mage and defeat them. Now I proceeded towards the keep as well, and when I was almost there, another fireball was hurled in my direction, from a much closer distance. I was barely able to evade it, and when I looked, I saw a flame atronach about twenty meters ahead. Despite the danger, I had to admire the magical creature's beauty, and I did not really want to kill it. Suddenly I had an idea and prepared the 'calm' spell in both of my hands; when I was ready, I dual cast it on the atronach. I guess that it worked, as it did not attack any longer, but just stood there. I had no clue what 'level' a flame atronach had in the game and if levels actually were a thing here, but it had been my first successful application of that spell. I could also have tried the 'KAAN' shout, but likely that only worked on living creatures, not magical ones. My two housecarls joined me and also enjoyed the sight of the calmed atronach, but we also wanted to keep looking around for some more time and maybe find some more loot. We did not intend to enter any of the interior areas here, and thus we decided that I'd keep practicing the 'calm' spell on the atronach, while Antonius and Jordis were going to check the area for loot for a few minutes at least. It turned out that there wasn't much of that anyway, except for a couple of small coin purses and a few common ingredients, and so we left the area soon again and headed west, leaving the temporarily calmed flame atronach as a guard.

Approaching the Shrine of Talos in the rock niche, we recognized that people must have been here. Somebody had obviously found the stash of Elven armor and weapons we had left when we had last been here, and they had pinned one of the armor sets, apparently the one with the most dried blood on it, to the rock wall, maybe as a sign that Thalmor were not welcome here. Most of the items were still here, and we packed what we could take for our hopefully short trip back to Whiterun.

A few hours later we reached the major road crossing east of Honningbrew Meadery, and we chatted with the guards there as well:

"Wow, it's you, B'lushona! Back from Windhelm?"

I had succeeded in making the guards, or at least most of them, use my name instead of calling me 'Thane', and I preferred it this way, although I failed to remember most of the guards' names. I greeted them and replied:

"Yes, just coming back, and I hope that Jarl Balgruuf will like my report. Has anything happened while I was gone?"

"I heard that the Companions got another new whelp now."

"That's interesting; I guess that I will meet them soon."

We took our leave again and followed the main road south, and in later afternoon, just before the sun went down, we entered the city through the main gate. Our first stop was Warmaiden՚s, and we sold most of our loot, the weapons and armor at least, to Ulfberth there, gaining us quite some money.

Once this was taken care of, Jordis and Antonius walked me to Jorrvaskr, and they went on to the city's guards barracks, while I entered the home of the Companions. It was almost time for dinner, and once again Athis and Njada brawled with each other, which made me smile. There was a new face at the table, and after a few seconds of thinking I even recognized it – Erik of Rorikstead. We had met in the last month of the previous year, and I had suggested that he might want to talk to Kodlak to find out if he could join the Companions, as he had wanted to become a fighter and adventurer rather than continue working on his father's farm and at the inn. Apparently, this had worked out, and I felt happy for him. He recognized me as well, and we talked for a few minutes, before the others also approached and wanted to learn how my time in Windhelm had been.

Over dinner, we talked, and when I finally retired to my bed in the attic, I had a good feeling. My trip to Windhelm had been successful, and tomorrow I was going to provide a detailed report to Jarl Balgruuf the Greater. Soon his steward would help me to find some land for a house of mine to be built, and maybe I was going to be able to spend some time on that effort. I certainly did not need adventures every day, and a quiet time would be nice. Naturally, I'd have to make some effort to have some income, as my intended house construction would not be cheap. Overall, though, life was good, and I was confidently looking forward to the future. For now, I was home again, home in Whiterun.

- The End ? -

[Author's Notes: No, of course this is not the end. Well, it is the end of book A, but book B will start very soon. I do hope that you may enjoy reading the next book as well, and if you don't, please let me know why not.

I am very happy to mention that the feedback I have received for this story, with more than 170 reviews and more than 200 followers so far (July 2023), has greatly encouraged me to keep on writing; a big 'Thank you' to all of you who have taken their time to write a few words! Occasionally I have had to delete a guest review due to bad language (curse words and such), but the overwhelming majority of reviews have been more than acceptable on that count. Please keep reading, following and reviewing for the second book, too!]